Jacking Cars

There was a time when all cars came with spare tires and jacks to change them..apparently in those halcyon days, tires blew like crazy...or farmers kept dropping very sharp hay balers in the road.

Nonetheless, American cars had jacks.  Pretty straightforward - you used them to jack up the car. Hence the name, no doubt. They worked beautifully - even women in white gloves could lift a car with ease.

Then Britain discovered that they weren't selling too many cars.  Given their auto quality, this came as no big surprise, but the real motivation was a bigger market, and we were it.

Problem - all the controls were on the right side of the car.  Americans didn't cotton to that. You can still lift the hood of big brother's XKE (bonnet -they had a name for everything) and laugh at the things they used to get all the controls over to the other side.  No wonder British cars were so famous for breaking down - they had cables, pulleys, hinged links, hastily designed valves and all manner of breakable things to get their car controls to the left.

But their spare wheel "jack" always mystified me.  It wasn't a jack - you wound it.  So what were you doing? "I was winding the car up when.." "I'll just break out the winder and we'll be back on the road in no time."

In America, you jack things - you jack things up, you jack guys around, you jack a hot car, etc. 

You just couldn't take these British cars seriously.