I vote for the Citroen DS a car way ahead of it's time.

No suggestions without a reason.

Triumph TR-7

Shape matches the fascia.

Ha.

BMW 2002

My truck, Dodge 1500 4x4 sitting on 35" tires. because CDs skip while offroading, so its the only viable solution. well maybe its not the perfect car for an empeg, but the empeg is by far the best head unit for it.

McLaren F1 - It is the "ultimate road car"... now just where to mount it?

MY CAR!!!!!


Gadget packed Mitsubishi 3000GT VR4 with lots of little extras!

1972 Datsun 510

1997 Championship White Acura Integra Type-R

Like the Empeg those who buy the car know why they want it way before they get it. Its not a car you just happen upon its something you look for for a long time before finding it.

And oh yeah with the Integra being the most stolen car in the US the pullout style of the empeg sure does help. 26 out of every 1000 Integra's are stolen coming in second is the jeep wrangler where only 8 out of a 1000 are stolen. Stealing stuff just isnt cool.

I'm also voting for the Maclaren.

Gordon Murray, the man who made the car possible didn't believe in radio. So, the car DIDN'T include a tuner just a 6 disk changer. The sterios controls were as minimal as the empegs. I'm sure if the Empeg had been around in 1992 it would have been factory equipment.

Koenigsegg - even rarer than the empeg (and swedish )

/Michael

Almost anything by TVR.

Honda Insight
about as revolutionary and as rare as the empeg.
And about to be discontinued just like it, too... 8-(

Armin

Subarus - quirky looking things. Fairly unassuming, but with much more under the bonnet (US: hood) than you'd expect. Handle like greased pigs on amphetamines.

Perfect host for an empeg

Man if you called it a bonnet in the US, you'd get your ass kicked in a heartbeat.

if you called it a bonnet in the US, you'd get your ass kicked in

It's very weird how US and British English use different words here (bonnet/hood) for the same, frankly eclectic, metaphor. I'm not sure what would look worse: a car resembling a woman's bonnet/hood, or a bonnet/hood resembling a car.

Peter

Intriguingly, I doubt that sort of thing is likely to happen. It seems to go along the same lines as expecting to hear "You wear a skirt, man you'll get your ass kicked!" whenever I wear my kilt.

Unsurprisingly it doesn't happen! People (I reckon) are much more likely to go "Oh is that what they call a hood in Britain?" (or even more likely "England")

Of course, my general build and look may also put people off having a go

Yeah, you probably wouldn't really get your ass-kicked. And people would probably understand the language difference from your accent. It's just funny watching Junk Yard Wars and hearing the british people talk. "alyoominyum" or my favorite "It's stuck good and proper". Do americans sound funny to english people? Do y'all say we have an 'american accent'?

Yup - but not only that, although Britain is pretty small, we have a huge number of regional accents so obviously everyone takes the piss out of everyone else. For example, although I have a fairly generic central Scottish accent at the moment, I was brought up in Orkney so my original accent would be understood by nobody on this board (with the probable exception of thinfourth), sometimes I speak like my father (fairly posh Warwickshire accent - that's pronounced Worrickshire) and sometimes like my mother (western Australian) so I tend to imitate other folks accents anyway.

South Park probably heightens the rest of the world's view of US accents. I'm sure they exaggerate them - or do they??

Do y'all say we have an 'american accent'?

I believe the American expression used here is "Hell, yes!".

An American accent is perfectly comprehensible to a Brit, but nonetheless instantly recognisable. The language differences, too, are rarely a problem; the only American prose that really sounds like a foreign language to me is baseball reporting. All the words make sense, but none of the sentences do. The nearest I've come to getting my ass kicked over it was when I told Tony Fabris once that "All the other colonies play proper cricket..."

Peter

Heh. I think that Cricket and Baseball are there soley to confuse foreigners with the arcane rules.

I find it interesting that you say American accents are perfectly comprehensible to Brits. Truth be told, when I speak with someone from England, I often have to concentrate rather hard in order to make sure I understand them.

And this is after watching lots of English actors on TV and in movies. There's something about the way "real" Brits speak in regular conversation that's different than the way Brit actors speak. I don't know exactly what it is. Maybe it's that all of the famous actors from England are all from the same town or something, and I've just gotten used to that regional dialect. Or maybe they all went to acting school and were taught to carefully enunciate every word when on camera.

I mean, it's not as bad as say, watching Brad Pitt in "Snatch" (I don't think most English people even understood him), but it's kind of like that. I think a better analogy would be when they made fun of the Scottish accent in "Chicken Run" ("Was that English?"). I honestly feel that way sometimes.

We're renting our second house to someone from Cambridge, and the few times I've talked to him, I've run into this problem a little bit. And of course, occasionally when I talk to you guys I miss a word here and there.

What we call a trunk, you call a boot!

What we call a station wagon, you call an estate...

um.. what else..

I forget what you call mufflers... something box?

What are sedans called?

There's something about the way "real" Brits speak in regular conversation that's different than the way Brit actors speak. I don't know exactly what it is. Maybe it's that all of the famous actors from England are all from the same town or something, and I've just gotten used to that regional dialect.

Generic south-eastern England accents are certainly more common in the media than accents of most other British regions. There are a lot of different British regional accents, and I bet few Americans are familiar with most or all of them.

For instance, the cities of Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield, Stoke, and Birmingham are only a few dozen miles apart, but those five accents sound completely different. People's resolving power for accents usually depends very strongly on proximity to their place of birth: to me, a Yorkshire accent is a Yorkshire accent, but most Yorkshiremen can tell which part of Yorkshire a speaker comes from, and (allegedly) Yorkshire dalesmen can tell which valley.

Perhaps someone should start a "Guide To British Regional Accents, With Examples From The Mass Media"...

But of course, none of that helps in dealing with mixed accents (for instance, mine: my parents are from Yorkshire and Surrey, I grew up near Stoke, then Manchester, and now live in Cambridge). Frankly, it's a wonder anyone can understand me: all my Northern friends say I've got an unmistakable Southern accent, and vice versa.

Do Americans perceive that kind of variety in US accents? I can tell a Texan accent, or a Deep South/New Orleans accent, or a strong New York accent ("Soiled them? I only just boight them!"), but almost everyone else just sounds "generic American" to me.

Peter

I forget what you call mufflers... something box?

Silencers

What are sedans called?

Saloons

I had to look the American words up on here: http://www.scit.wlv.ac.uk/~jphb/american.html

Though it doesn't have chivvy, wonky, or to have a benny, all of which drew blank looks from Sonic Blue types who came over from the US office a while ago. And I won't soon forget the look on the faces of the forty or so engineers at the US office when Mike said, in the middle of a presentation, that he was teaching their grandmothers to suck eggs.

Peter

I was brought up in Orkney so my original accent would be understood by nobody on this board (with the probable exception of thinfourth)

He really means this. I spent a semester in the same flat as an Orkney-bred Scot, and it took a while for verbal communication to gain any effectiveness.

Do Americans perceive that kind of variety in US accents? I can tell a Texan accent, or a Deep South/New Orleans accent, or a strong New York accent

Yes, we can perceive that variety quite clearly, but only to the large general regions you just specified. Tight regional speciation like the kind you described for Liverpool/Manchester/etc is only something that experts can discern.

My favorite US accent to make fun of is the mid-northern Minnesota/North Dakota accents from communities made up of mostly Norwegian descendants. Don'tcha know. I just love watching "Fargo" and listening to "A Prairie Home Companion".

Bostonians supposedly posess this skill of tight regional accent recognition. The can tell a Nort-End from a South-End or East-Boston accent, and Charlestowners sound totally different.

But then, being an alien (brit: foreigner) in this country, it's all lost on me.

Armin

Yes, The whole British accent thing reminds me of southern accents. You don't know how many times I get "are you from texas" from northerners just because I have a southern accent. where here in mississippi if you go to the capitol (Jackson) there is a different accent on every side of town, not to mention every part of the state. Im sure it is the same everywhere as I know people from ohio that have similar northern accents but they are not the same.

This helps us too!

http://www.peevish.co.uk/slang/

Bostonians supposedly posess this skill of tight regional accent recognition. The can tell a Nort-End from a South-End or East-Boston accent, and Charlestowners sound totally different.

That's not difficult: Irish = South-End, Italian = North End, Educated = Charlestown, and anything else must be East.

I knew there was some logic behind this!

Armin