h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

...one of Led Zeppelin's less well known songs.

So, how's the car? What happened? That'll teach you to buy a Ferrari.

Less well known? But surely thats the most famous

*laughs*
Well as I was playing with my toy Ferrari the fan belt broke on the outside lane of the motorway... such fun it was and only just approaching rush hour Any we got back about 2 hours ago finally, after being diverted from tow truck to tow truck!

*wonders whether he's being mocked for his grammar or taste in music*

Toy Ferrari - that would be the road going kind, yes?

Fan belt? I've never actually driven a car with a fan belt - they've all had electric fans. In theory this is better, although it tends to be a bit more drastic when you discover that the fan's stopped working. My first car, a Polo, had no temperature gauge, just a light that was supposed to come on when it was close to overheating. My mum had bought the car new, then my sister had it, and finally I got it when it was 12 years old, and that light had never ever come on.

So, one day, I was in a traffic jam on the A1(M), and the light came on. I couldn't help thinking that as an early warning device it left something to be desired, when 2 seconds later there was a very loud 'pop' and a huge cloud of steam emerged from the engine. I then discovered that one of my sister's 'repairs' had failed - she'd wrapped the fuse for the fan (which had evidently blown at some point in the past) with the foil from a cigarette packet, and less than brilliant arrangement had finally failed, so the fan failed to come on when required...

So clearly, the only solution is the one a colleague of mine has just gone for: buy a pre-1996 Porsche 911 - radiator hose failures aren't really an issue with them. (Although a fan belt failure is much more of a problem there...)