Alternator failure on a 2005 Cooper S, eh? Join the club - I have a feeling there are a lot of other members out there. Ours (early 2006 model) was out of just warranty, BMW dicked us around, paid for the alternator (but not the fitting) which we found out later was probably so they could hang on to it. The consumer…

Confirming the sense of humour, a story I heard when I worked at the Dunton Technical Centre in the UK in the '80s, later confirmed in the Observer newspaper:

'Tis a lovely thing and this is my favourite view, wrecked by coming from the Worst Animal Stories post where I saw this:

Headline misread as:

Thank'ee, it does - and, being as I was born and brought up in South-East London, in the nicest possible way!

I wonder why he wanted it built in England? I'm sure Pininfarina would be more than happy to make him one... hand beaten over the original template!

The Modulo and its wooden template are both in the Pininfarina collection and I'm pretty sure they have the template for the yellow 512s Berlinetta Speciale but not the car itself. I think it was bought by someone in France and was in a small car museum for a while. There is a Facebook page for it which has some…

I am mildly obsessed by this car, and would appreciate a Jalopnik feature on it, especially if someone can track down where it is now.

My turn:

I read a piece somewhere, by someone much funnier than me, who said maybe they are to warn you you watch out for used diapers being slung out of the windows.

Charlie steers, this 2hp engine under the hood:

Prof Pat Pending lives.

I saw this at the Tokyo Motor Show and so wanted Suzuki to make it as a production car, tiny V8 included.

My favourite Japanese Bubble (as in Bubble Economy) car boot display was the Toyota Chaser Avante LORDLY Twincam 24, four badges, all different fonts, with and without serifs, in a mixture of chrome, gold plate and black, polished, engraved and hairline finish, if I remember correctly.

Kudos to your mum for having to be told off by your teacher for feeding your car mania!

The original books were wonderful, a down-to-earth fantasy by Ian "James Bond" Fleming with almost perfect illustrations. The descriptions of the car are pure dopamine for a four- or five- year-old car nut. I think secondhand copies of the original set of three cost a packet now but there was a reissue with the…

When the movie came out, 7-year-old-me was almost as horrified by the abomination they tried to fob off on us as Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang as all of you are by the monstrosity at the top of this page. Any child who loved the books as much as my brothers and I did knew that Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang was a British Racing…

Thanks for the heads-up to the WIRED piece. I just Googled it and had no idea there were still two "Canberras" flying, let alone on the front line.

A Victor tanker crashed into a Canberra bomber (another quirky British plane, with an asymmetrical cockpit) in 1968 over a village called Holt in Norfolk, eastern England, during a night-time thunderstorm. We were staying there on our summer holiday.

Like the Lagonda but less in-yer-face and with the beautiful surface modeling that Nissan were perfecting and started appearing a couple of years later on JDM cars like the R13 Silvia and R32 Skyline.