About the site
Who keeps this site going
Two private individuals in Cape Town, both well past fifty, who have been going to motor shows since long before either of us needed reading glasses to see a spec board. This is not a company and there is nothing registered behind it.
Show halls and long roads, Cape Town
One of us spent a working life in logistics, which means a professional interest in load volumes, axle weights and whether a thing actually fits, and a permanent suspicion of any number quoted without a measuring convention attached. The other taught woodwork and technical drawing for decades, which turns out to be excellent training for noticing that a door shut line is uneven or that a hinge has been asked to do a job it was not designed for. Between the two habits, most of this site writes itself.
We started going to expos together because it was a cheap Saturday and we both disliked forecourts. Somewhere in the middle of all those halls we noticed that the people around us, mostly our own age, were making decisions on almost no information: a flattering turntable, a price on a board, and a salesperson with a target. Nobody was telling them to sit behind their own driving position, or to ask what a service costs once the plan has run out.
So the notebooks turned into pages, and the pages turned into this. The site earns nothing from advertising, carries no banners, runs no analytics and sells no data, because all of that would change what we are willing to write. The small amount of money that comes in comes from the jobs on the price list, paid by the person who asked for the work.
We are opinionated and we try to be honest about which parts are opinion. When we say that most people over fifty-five end up happier in the duller, roomier car, that is a conclusion from a few hundred conversations rather than a measurement, and you are entitled to disagree with it. When we say a boot takes two hard cases side by side, we have put them in there ourselves.
What this site is not
- Not a dealership, a broker or an agent. We never hold a car, hold money or sign on your behalf.
- Not a registered business with staff. It is two people, a room in Bree Street and a telephone.
- Not a review site with scores out of ten. Numbers out of ten flatten exactly the things we care about.
- Not a place that will tell you what you want to hear. Several people have been told to keep the car they already own.
House rules
Three rules we have not broken yet
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We take money from one side only
The reader pays, or nobody does. No stand, importer, dealer, insurer or workshop has ever paid us for a mention and we would rather close the site than start. It is the only arrangement under which the awkward sentences can stay in.
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A checkable number beats an adjective
Kilometres, litres, rand, months between services, the name of the pass. If a sentence on this site would work equally well for a site in Ireland or Ontario, it is a weak sentence and we rewrite it. Not every page passes that test yet.
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We say when we do not know
There are whole areas we are not qualified to judge, from crash structures to the long-term behaviour of a particular gearbox. We will point you at someone qualified rather than guess, and we will tell you plainly that we are at the edge of what we know.
Show halls and long roads
Phone us before the show, not after it
A forty-five minute call the week before an expo changes the whole day, and it costs less than the parking and the tickets together. Phone the Bree Street number during the hours on the contact page, or send a note through the form and tell us which show you are going to and what the car has to do for you.