Least manly Car.

Okay, not a production version but I do see a horrendous pink Land Rover Freelander on my daily commute, makes me want to barf! But then again some Landy forums call them 'gaylanders'!
 
daewoo matiz - they have them in Vietnam, absolutely awful looking, performance is ummm.... interesting. But they use them as taxis and actually for the size of car they are roomy inside (i.e. i'm only 6ft and dont hit my head of the ceiling in the back but i do in a toyota vios).

most unmanly car, Vauxhall Tigra, but need to agree with MA's comment on the boxster, they are somewhat feminine.
 
i like the look of the car. wouldnt buy one, too small for my needs.

The Puma is pretty - it's only really a Ford Ka with a different bodyshell and a punchier engine option.

Dynamically, like all late 90's Fords it's very good with one glaring exception. The BRAKES.

The 1996/7 Jaguar XK8 was under Ford's quality control - very well built and reliable. But the brakes were hopelessly inadequate for a car with it's performance potential.
 
Puma and Ka are based on the Fiesta platform. The Zetec-SE base for the 1.7 Puma engine was developed by Yamaha, then bored out to 1.7 from the original 1.6. Brakes were shocking as stated, apparently.
 
The Zetec engines were very very good indeed. Ford latterly adopted 'Zetec' as a trim and feature fitment level across it's range of cars. Ghia, Ghia X, and Titanium were also used as sub model derivations. Thankfully Ford decided to fit brakes which we up to the job by this time.
 
I quite like these random fact throwing sessions lol.

Here's a good one....Due to Ford replacing 70% of the original Mk1 Focus' parts and rigourous over-engineering, they lost about £4k on every Mk1 Focus RS sold LOL.
 
I quite like these random fact throwing sessions lol.

Here's a good one....Due to Ford replacing 70% of the original Mk1 Focus' parts and rigourous over-engineering, they lost about £4k on every Mk1 Focus RS sold LOL.

They're good indeed.

VW loses about £750,000 on every Veyron sold. No big deal really, very few are actually sold but VAG still incurred the development cost as well.
 
OUCH! Ford built 4501 so I make that a total loss of around 18,000,000 LOL. That's a lot so I'm inclined to believe the £4k estimate includes development costs!

The Veyron's transmission was actually developed in England by Ricardo plc. Whereas the other DSG's were Borg-Warner.
 
My current car uses a Borg-Warner auto 'box. It's a traditional torque-converter arrangement with 6 ratios, but you cannot select 6th manually. It's only available in normal D
 
The Mercedes SLK (SL-Gay)

Simple as people who run beauty salons own these!

Graham Norton and Dale Winton own One so my opinion is this car
 
That due to speed restriction??

No, the listed flat out speed is 147mph. The quicker ones are electronically limited to 155mph. Even in 5th it has plenty enough revs to exceed 155, just not enough bhp to do it with.

It won't select 6th automatically in Sport mode either. I'm guessing that it's because 6th is an impossibly high gear which has no value except in high speed overdrive cruising and you'd never do this sort of driving in Sport or 'pseudo-manual' mode.

It's a funny arrangement, this Steptronic one. Despite being a conventional hydraulic torque converter/planetary gear type of 'box the manual over-ride doesn't just inhibit upchanges. It will also inhibit downchanges, which is not how most trad automatics work. If you do something really dim like come to a halt in 5th it will come down the box to get you away again safely. Full kickdown works as well but you have to upchange again manually. If you don't do so then it'll just run into the rev limiter. It also inhibits silly changes, slam it in first at 85mph and the change is inhibited.

There's also some part throttle kickdown which works superbly and the torque converter locks up in steady state driving in higher gears in auto mode. Manual override and sport mode the lockup is inhibited.

It's more intuitive than most automatic setups and it takes some time to get used to leaving it alone and let it make up its own mind, which it does very well and very quickly. If you crest a hill at say 50mph and lift off it will actually come down a gear ratio if the car starts to increase speed.

Sport mode doesn't really change anything very much but it will linger in lower gears for longer after a quick bout of full throttle acceleration.
 
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Went in a smart car the other day, this is probably the least manly car I've ever been in! It was also pink which didn't help matters. I had to get out and rub engine oil over my hands to feel proper manly again.
 
The jelly bean shape Mazda 121 should be on the list.

Just remembered them when I saw one of them rotting away on the neighbors driveway.
 

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