And of course MB never mentioned the car that obviously inspired it:

Land Rovers have a couple of “ wading plugs” you have to fit if you are going to do some deep water crossing/fording/wading or if you intend to play down the river for far too long.

Indeed. Preparing an old MB/GPW for fording took a huge amount of time (quite a few hours, can’t remember off the top of my head) and involved liberal use of a sticky goo - some sort of grease mixed with asbestos. Not exactly the kind of thing you volunteered to do.

Meanwhile, off the coast of Devon...

That is not quite correct.

And a picture of a proper rally car very much “lifted” for the 1983 Safari (recent pic):

When the first SLK was fairly new, some guy had an SLK body grafted onto a G-Wagen frame with huge tyres. He also ordered a matching trailer with the same humungous wheels. He intended to do some crazy overland trip with it.

This was posted a while ago (by Mr Buzz Killington?) somewhere in Jalopnik or Oppositelock:

I agree. Sick is an apt word to describe doing that to a DS – but maybe not with the meaning you intend to convey.

Jules used to be (or still is?) a line of products for men (cologne, eau de toilette etc) by Christian Dior. Most famously in 1981 Dior sponsored a “Jules” Porsche 936 at Le Mans (chassis 936/03). It won.

Fascinating, just looked up elephant bird in Wikipedia (amazing bit about the eggs floating all the way to Oz).

On the subject of language and the kiwi birds... I’ve noticed sometimes kiwi (no -s ending) works also as the plural form (as in “sheep”). For example, “there used to be lots of kiwi around the place” instead of regular English “there used to be lots of kiwis around the place”.

Cannot agree with you in this one. Being an anatomical term that came straight from Latin, the right plural in English is cloacae, in the same way insects have antennae and not antennas. “Regular” plural endings are acceptable once the term enters the general lexicon (as it is the case with “antennas”); I don’t think…

Kiwis are not small!!!

I think you got it wrong. Of all the existing flightless birds species in the world most are indeed endemic to New Zealand, but that does not mean that most birds in New Zealand are flightless, or that most of the birds species in the country are flightless. On the contrary: the introduction of foreign species (i.e.…

It somehow reminds me of the Mini in Goodbye Pork Pie, an exceptionally cool film from the land of the long white cloud which I can thoroughly recommend:

Excellent point.

This is a classic example of Daimler-Benz trying too hard to be subtle and their whole effort horribly backfiring. Those sticks are indeed fragrance blotters, as Mr Minardi says: the place behind the car is the Musée Internationale de la Parfumerie de Grasse, in the French Riviera (usual habitat for a Maybach, I…

Dunno. Care to suggest an alternative to Ms Moss then?

Oh, not at all. She’s not even my kind of girl.