Ahoy there buoy racer!
QUESTION What happened to the Amphi-Ranger, a German-built amphibious vehicle that was sold in the UK in the late Eighties and early Nineties? Does anyone own one? THIS was built by a German company specialising in such infrastructure components as gas, oil, water and sewerage which needed a tough, amphibious SUV that could work in remote areas.
In the early Eighties, RMA (Rheinauer Maschinen und Armaturenbau KG) enlisted the services of legendary industrial designer Hans Trippel, who had designed the Mercedes-Benz gullwing door, the Norwegian Troll car and the Amphicar, the most successful amphibious civilian auto built.
The first, the Amphi-Ranger 2000SR, introduced in 1985, had an aluminiumalloy hull which was resistant to seawater, a Ford 2-litre, four-cylinder engine giving 100 horsepower, with a power take-off for use with equipment in remote areas. Under the rear bumper was an electric propeller. Once it was afloat, the front wheels acted as rudders.
The 2000SR weighed more than a ton and with just 100hp it was sluggish on the roads. In 1986, RMA introduced the 2800SR which weighed almost two tons, but now had an extra forward speed in the transmission and a 3-litre V6 engine. This gave it 145hp, and it could reach 85mph on land and 9.3mph/eight knots in water.
Production ran between 1985 and 1989 but only about 80 were built. Most were sold to industrial companies and government agencies, including police forces, but despite costing about £30,000, some were bought privately.
One British owner used to ply his on the Thames in the early Nineties. He later sold it to a Dutch businessman, and it was recently found in a university in Delft. There are plans to refurbish it. Another, in perfect condition, was recently on display at the Friedrichshafen classic car show.
There is an Amphi- Ranger club in Germany called Interessen-Gemeinschaft Amphi- Ranger ( IGAR) that has ten members with 11 cars. It does not have a website but can be contacted on amphicar@gmx.de
Alan Bettinson, Windermere, Westmorland. QUESTION How does Tesco’s whopping £6.4 billion annual loss compare with the largest annual losses of all time? THE dotcom bubble and the U.S. housing bubble — the sub-prime crisis — which precipitated the global financial meltdown of 2007/ 8 led to the largest losses in corporate history. Apart from that the biggest corporate loss was the disastrous merger of AOL (America Online) and Time Warner.
By the end of the Nineties, AOL was the most popular internet service provider, with 27 million users, and it used its inflated stock to buy media giant Time Warner in 2000. Yet despite being king of the dial-up internet world, AOL’s business model imploded with the arrival of broadband and the free-to-use Google model. The company had to write off £70 billion in 2002.
In the mid- Noughties American International Group (AIG) took on billions of dollars of risk associated with mortgages, and in 2008, when the sub-prime mortgage market collapsed, it reported losses of almost £69 billion.
Mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were two more casualties of the housing bubble implosion. Fannie Mae lost in the region of £40 billion in 2008 and a further £50 billion in 2009. Freddie Mac lost about £ 40 billion in 2008. Cumulatively, the companies have lost about £1 trillion and continue to require billions in bailout funds.
JDS Uniphase, which produces optical communications networks, was another dotcom bubble casualty. In 2001 it wrote off £35 billion spent on the purchase of telecommunication equipment rivals that were wisely moving to internet-based services.
General Motors was another casualty of the financial crisis, although its demise was many years in the making. It reported losses of £28 billion in 2007 and £22 billion a year later.
Paul Evans, Walsall, West Mids. TESCO’S loss is the sixth largest in British corporate history and the largest in British retail history.
In 2008 Royal Bank of Scotland reported a loss of £24.1 billion — a £16.2 billion writedown against acquisitions, including its disastrous takeover of parts of Dutch rival ABN Amro in 2007, plus a further £7.9 billion in operating losses. Its CEO at the time, Fred ‘The shred’ Goodwin, was stripped of his knighthood. However, RBS still managed to award staff bonuses of £ 1 billion in 2010. In 2006, Vodafone announced a loss of £21.8 billion, largely because of a series of write-offs from poor acquisitions. The company had also reported a £13.5 billion loss in 2002.
Lloyds Banking Group announced its HBOS arm had lost £10.8 billion in 2008. Telecoms group Cable & Wireless Plc lost £6.5 billion in 2003.
Archie Murphy, Edinburgh. QUESTION The classic song by The Band, The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, includes the line ‘there goes Robert E. Lee’. But should this really be ‘there goes the Robert E. Lee’, referring to the famous steamboat and not the Confederate general himself? THE previous answer suggesting ‘the’ should be used in front of ships’ names leads to an interesting point: to seafarers, a ship has a personality.
We refer to a ship by her name alone, with no preceding ‘the’, exactly as one would refer to a person. People would say ‘Robert is at home’ not ‘The Robert is at home’. Similarly, a mariner would say ‘Daring is alongside in Portsmouth’, not ‘The Daring is alongside…’
There are, however, many exceptions: Dundee’s preserved frigate HMS Unicorn spent an undignified few years being called The Frigate Unicorn, but, generally, use of ‘the’ before a ship’s name is slack usage which does, however, serve as a means of identifying outsiders.
Any profession or other closed group of people quickly develops its own linguistic quirks, both for internal bonding and for outward protection. In a similar vein, a ship is always ‘she’, never ‘it’, and we are always ‘in’ a ship, never ‘on’ one.
There is another trap, in the distinction between ships and boats. Generally, a ship is big and a boat is small. The rule of thumb is ‘a ship is big enough to carry a boat’.
Finally, submarines, no matter how large, are always ‘boats’. Fortunately, the term ‘vessel’ covers most uses.
Roderick Stewart (Lt Cdr), Dronley, Angus.
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