"She'll start. You need these..."

Your 1960 Monterey was built at St. Louis Assembly, Hazelwood, Missouri.
The Body Style is a 4-Dr. Sedan.
It has a V-8, 312 CID Engine with a 2-barrel carburetor
It's sticker price was $2730
There were 49594 built in 1960
Your Monterey 4-Dr. Sedan was the 37477 Mercury ordered in 1960

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=119233&id=544157585&l=b69b27b9dd

I think... 6 points for the reference. It's not hugely obscure but I'm probably more likely to remember that line than most people.

And yeah. They're gonna need names. I'm thinking "Silent Running" may provide here (and that'll make 'em all male). Though the temptation to call the Mercury "Clayton" is strong, I tend to name cars for where they were "born" if I can.

Rest of the codes:

Build Date - 6D - this means the car was scheduled to be built on the 6th April 1960
Color - M - Polar White (that'll be easy to match, then!)
Trim - 27A - unsure yet
Transmission and axle are 2-speed and 2.77:1 final drive IIRC. Body is 58A, which I'll check up on but probably will be 4 door sedan (there are also 4 door hardtop coupes, which have pillarless doors and a smoother rear window.

Lord Alan of Sugar

Am I the only one utterly baffled by Alan Sugar's appearance as an "Enterprise Tsar"? Of all the high-profile industry figures, if you look back at his firm, origins and success, he's basically done very little for the UK and indeed, has made some spectacularly poor decisions for his firm, if not for his own personal finances. Meanwhile, whilst cosying up to Brown and claiming to support Labour, without Thatcher's economic landscape, Amstrad probably wouldn't have reached the level it did in the 80s.

As far as I can tell, Alan Sugar's UK business knowledge consists primarily of making money for himself through property, and importing cheap crap from China and flogging it. And even then, he cocks it up a lot of the time. You might as well employ Lewis Hamilton, who also has made money for Lewis Hamilton and is building a property empire too.

Thinking

[Poll #1412539]

I considered filtering other stuff, but on the whole I'm not into "filters", the most I'll do is lock the occasional post rather than making them all public. However, this could potentially get a bit tedious, along the lines of "finally freed off the captive nuts for the tailgate but UPS screwed up my new shipment and now the Rambler's sitting in the yard with an open back end" or "it looks like this part from a 1959 Ford will sort out this fault on the Mercury" - with pictures. If I filter it I want to do it from the beginning, from pulling them out of their brambles to selling, scrapping or succeeding.