“Car industry bodies hit back at ‘dangerous’ biennial MOT plan” reads Autocar’s article about the U.K.’s proposal to reduce living expenses by making vehicle safety inspections (MOTs) mandatory every two years instead of one. “Scrapping annual MOT could lead to 2.9million dangerous cars on UK roads” writes the Daily Express. “Scrapping annual MOT tests would cost lives and wouldn’t even save motorists money, experts say” iNews writes. These are just three of many articles critical of the biennial inspection proposal, and I find them to be rather laughable and borderline fearmongering. Here’s why.
I mention this topic after seeing talented-car-journalist Jonny Smith’s tweet a few weeks ago:
MoTs every 2 years proposed by the UK gov. This is a terrible false economy. How many car owners ever check their cars? An MoT test is £40. Worth risking for national road safety? https://t.co/IoB628uXyQ
— Jonny Smith (@Carpervert) April 26, 2022
“Worth risking for national road safety?” Smith asks, clearly dischuffed at the proposal. Again, he isn’t alone. Even British motoring association “The AA” issued a statement ripping on the idea, with The Sunday Times reporting:
“Though well intended, moving the yearly £55 spend on an MOT to every two years could make costs worse for drivers with higher repair bills, make our roads more dangerous and would put jobs in the garage industry at risk,” said the organisation’s head of roads policy, Jack Cousens, who noted that a previous call for biannual MOTs was ditched after review.
“Only recently the government stepped away from switching the MOT to every two years on the grounds of road safety, while AA polling shows overwhelming support from drivers who like the security that an annual health check provides.
“The MOT now highlights major and dangerous defects too, showing how important it is to keep cars in a safe condition.”
That second paragraph saying drivers actually prefer annual MOTs is a bit bonkers to me. But so is this quote from the same article:
“This could be genuinely dangerous for drivers, cyclists and pedestrians and we would be seeing cars on the roads with serious defects. And when it comes to the cost of living, this proposal won’t help at all,” said Karen Rotberg, co-founder of BookMyGarage.
This all comes as Britain struggles with inflation and high energy bills — all of which have combined to lead U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson to ask his cabinet to “come with ‘innovative’ ideas to help ease the pressure on household finances which do not require government spending,” per Sky News. Apparently the Secretary of State for Transport, Grant Shapps, floated this idea of making the annual vehicle inspection biennial.
Anyway, unlike Smith and a bunch of British publications, I do not see this as a significant safety problem at all. In fact, to even suggest that it’s a major safety hazard is utterly laughable.
Much Ado About Nothing
Look, as many of you know, I live in Michigan, a state that has no safety inspection whatsoever. I’ve been critical of this overly-laissez-faire approach from a state that uses so much road salt; I’ve even called for a basic inspection that looks for rusted-out brake lines and bad ball joints, so I want to be clear that I’m not at all saying “Michigan doesn’t do it, so stop being babies.” Michigan’s approach is illogical.
With that said, even though I do think a basic inspection is a good idea, I know full well that there’s plenty of data out there showing that safety inspections aren’t really that effective. For one, it’s not like cars are crashing left and right due to mechanical failures, with the U.S. Department of Transportation writing:
The critical reason, which is the last event in the crash causal chain, was assigned to the driver in 94 percent (±2.2%)† of the crashes. In about 2 percent (±0.7%) of the crashes, the critical reason was assigned to a vehicle component’s failure or degradation.
Two percent in the U.S.. That’s not a huge figure to begin with, but it’s still more than zero, I’ll grant that. Still, numerous studies have shown very little correlation between vehicle crash rates and inspection mandates, mentioning that the inspection programs tend to be poorly run, and that they yield very little measurable benefit to road safety.
Still, despite the small number of crashes resulting from mechanical failures, and despite the literature pointing to inspections not necessarily offering much relief in terms of component failure-caused incidents, I still believe in basic safety inspections on principle, especially after having seen numerous dangerous corrosion-related vehicular failures that could have easily been prevented.
The reason why I think the Brits complaining about biennial inspections taking the place of annual ones is so absurd has little to do with whether these inspections are actually just placebos in the first place. Let’s ignore the studies/data for a second, and just consider this: Germany, a country with the Autobahn network on which one can literally drive one’s car at 200 mph if the vehicle can go that fast, requires just one TÜV inspection every two years. Here, I’ve actually gone through that inspection myself with a van I bought for $600:
I YouTubed the British MOT test, and it looks remarkably similar to Germany’s TÜV test:
My point here is that there is absolutely no way in hell that Great Britain needs to inspect its cars twice as frequently as Germany does. I get it; there are some differences in the inspections, the roadways are maintained differently, and there are a bunch of other factors at play, but the typical U.K. motorist doesn’t even drive 7,500 miles a year. That’s less than the average German motorist, who — I’ll reiterate — drives literally as fast as they freaking want to. (And here in the lawless, poorly maintained roads of the U.S., we drive over 12,000 miles a year). Plus, a quick google search shows that there are more registered cars on the road in Germany than in the U.K.
So, to reiterate, Germany has more cars, they drive faster, and yet the nation has mandatory vehicle inspections every two years. You’ll be hard-pressed to find anyone who says the cars on German roads are dangerous; as someone who’s gotten a junker through Germany’s TÜV, trust me when I say they are anything but. If anything, Germany’s inspection is too frequent.
Plus, from a technical side of things, what’s the real concern, here? As an engineer and experienced at-home mechanic, I have a good idea of what can make a car genuinely dangerous. Bad wheel bearings can do it, bad ball joints, rusty brake lines and suspension/structural components, wobbly tie rod ends, exhausts that rust off, old tires, compromised braking systems — these are the main worries. Pretty much anything that can prevent your car from steering, stopping, or remaining firmly suspended above its four wheels is what you’re most worried about. And the likelihood of these bits going from “in good shape” to “failed catastrophically” in the 15,000 miles the average motorist would be driving between appointments is extremely low. They might have worn out, but to fail catastrophically after being thoroughly and correctly assessed as “in good shape” just 15,000 miles prior (or 25,000 miles for the upper quartile of drivers) just doesn’t seem like a major worry. In my experience, things like wheel bearings will usually start to make some noise before gradually wearing out over a long time. Ball joints will become loose long before that ball shows any signs of wanting to pop out of a socket.
As long as the inspections are done properly with the mindset of “will this last two more years?” then I see no issue here.
[Editor’s Note: Certain mechanical and bodywork issues aren’t an immediate MOT failure, but instead are marked as advisory items and could fail inspection in a year or two’s time. Some of these advisories are a bit on the serious side, including slight play in wheel bearings and slight play in ball joints. Honestly, I’d be more concerned about advisories becoming dangerous within the span of two years than any perfectly good components. – TH]
What Does Our Resident Brit Think?
I asked Adrian Clarke, The Autopian’s resident non-secret car designer. I figured if I didn’t get at least some input from a Brit, I’d be eviscerated in the comments like I was back when I foolishly used the term “spastic” in my Jalopnik review of the then-new Wheeler Dealers series (turns out that’s a really bad word among British folks; I nearly caused an international incident, with Mike Brewer’s fans absolutely destroying me on Twitter — for the record, the term is often used to mean “overly energetic” here in the U.S.).
In fact, if you’ll pardon the brief aside, here’s a comment from Mike Brewer himself (I have no idea what he’s talking about re: stroke victim). Given that the article was so positive, I’m fairly sure he knew I wasn’t being horribly offensive in the middle of a nice blog (clearly it would have been out of place), but mentioned it to drum up drama — ultimately he got me more clicks, though not for reasons I’m proud of, obviously:
Anyway, back to Adrian, the man who will make this article immune to any criticism that could spark another international incident between the U.K. and the U.S.. I asked him about the MOT, and he broke it down: “It takes about 45 minutes, it’s a general roadworthiness test, they look at tyres, suspension for wear, visible structural corrosion, safety systems, emissions, lighting that sort of thing.”
“From what I understand the objections seem to be if you can’t afford to MOT your car yearly, you’ve got bigger financial problems,” he told me in a chat message. “Also all MOT records are now public and cover a vehicles mileage as well, so it’s a great way of tackling fraud if you’re looking to buy a second hand car” he continued.
“No it’s not cheap, but in the grand scheme of things that’s a pound a week,” he said, mentioning that it’s not hard to find shops that’ll do the inspection for under 40 pounds. “People would prefer a reduction in fuel duty as a cost of living reduction.”
With All That Said, This Proposal Is Bullshit
Now, I want to make clear that, even though I think many of the Brits claiming that the proposal would lead to unsafe roads are being big babies, I do find this whole concept to be absolutely idiotic.
First off, if the whole premise behind annual inspections is that they do indeed exist for safety reasons (whether that bears itself out with data or not), then removing them to save motorists 55 pounds every couple of years makes little sense. If you’re going to claim to do something for safety reasons, you don’t stop doing it to save people a few bucks. The whole idea is silly.
It’s also worth discussing some of the points that YouTuber Twin-Cam (did he name his channel after the GM successor to the beloved Quad 4 dual overhead camshaft inline-four?) mentions in his video above. He talks about how some garages actually do MOT inspections for less than 55 pounds (sometimes 40 quid, like Adrian said) to get folks in the door; but if the inspection goes to every two years, they’ll almost certainly raise prices to the maximum 55 pound figure allowed by law. So that’ll cut into the perceived savings a bit. Twin-Cam also says shops will find ways to make money even if they see fewer vehicles in for MOTs — perhaps mechanics will be harsher, or they’ll raise their rates.
There’s a lot of good stuff in the video above; I think the young man did a great job with it, though he does make this statement: “The proposed change would be a disaster for road safety.”
No. No it will not. There is a very slim chance that it will make any discernible difference to roadway safety. And there is a zero percent chance that it will be a disaster. There’s more from iNews, who writes:
“The suggested law that MOT checks would be changed from annually to every two years will make our roads significantly less safe,” said Rebecca Needham, Rospa’s road safety manager in England.
In 2020 there were 29 fatal accidents and 345 serious injury accidents in which a vehicle defect was a contributing factor, Rospa figures show.
“We expect that this number would increase” if MOT tests became less frequent, Ms Needham said.
No Ms. Needham, I know you’re the Road Safety Manager for the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (Rospa), but let’s be honest: There’s no way this proposal will make your roads “significantly less safe.” It’s just not going to happen. Please stop with this nonsense.
All of these people claiming that going from a ridiculously frequent inspection to an inspection as frequent as Germany’s golden standard, the TÜV inspection (which is meant to prepare cars for an Autobahn with no speed limit) is going to turn British roads into a bloodbath are full of shit. They’ve got a bad case of Stockholm Syndrome, having become so used to Daddy Government coddling them that they just no longer feel safe not having their vehicles looked over every year.
And that’s okay; peace of mind has value. But my dear Brits, stop whining about how this proposal is a safety risk; the reality is that you don’t need an annual inspection. I agree that the premise behind trying to use safety inspections as a way to save cash is dumb, but this isn’t a significant safety risk. Vehicle inspections are already controversial in their effectiveness; your annual MOT came about when people were driving shoddily-built Austin Minis and Hillman Imps and it’s no longer relevant today; Brits drive fewer than 7,500 miles a year; the strict Autobahn-loving Germans drive more and inspect their vehicles only once every two years; and honestly, your major suspension and steering bits aren’t likely to go from “good” to “holy shit this thing is a deathtrap” in 15,000 miles.
This is much ado about nothing. Relax.
So first, of all, the statistics don’t really tell you anything. Just because there were only 29 fatal accidents and 345 serious injury accidents associated with cars that were not roadworthy doesn’t mean that this number won’t explode with less frequent inspections. The curve is probably exponential, not linear with time between inspections.
Secondly, do these numbers reflect accidents where the *severity* of the accident was greater due to the structure of one or more vehicles being compromised by rust?
Thirdly, what about other less catastrophic issues: things like headlight alignment? After an accident, can investigators really tell if lights had failed or were out of alignment, dazzling oncoming drivers?
With Brits’ average annual mileage and the better quality of late model cars, MOT every two years is not about to create road carnage. Methinks they’re moaning just to see their names in print, on Twitter, etc.
I’m in Pennsylvania, where we used to have to get our cars inspected every six months. It’s been annual for the last few decades now, and there are fewer inspection rejections than ever. The ones that are rejected are most often, from the mechanics I know, due to tires and brakes. Brakes are going to let you know that they’re approaching end of life well before total failure, and tires, well, people are always going to be cheapskates and try to keep running bald tires or never even look at them. And how many states have no inspection at all. I don’t see stories about carnage from them.
Our state dropped safety inspections recently altogether because of the missing link connecting it with road safety as you mentioned. It basically amounted to very little. That being said, I think that over time those small things might add up. I would say every 5 or 10.
If its truly about safety then older cars shouldn’t be exempted. They even did a whole TG ep about buying old cars to skip MOT.
Unless UK cars are of really bad quality, I don’t think that it’s an issue. The fact that Michigan has no state inspection makes me lose my mind!
Clutch those pearls Brits!
Seriously, “safety” has been used as a club for as long as I can remember, usually to enable government overreach and/or spending. It’s why you see small town police departments sporting MRAPs.
Wisconsin checking in. The land of beer, cheese, and road salt doesn’t do any sort of safety inspection, and it really should. Some of the garbage driving down our roads is quite scary. The studies may say that 2% or whatever is blamed on mechanical failure, but that’s 2% that could be improved upon with an inspection.
You have to weigh the cost of slightly reducing the crashes due to mechanical failure vs the cost (and time) of inspecting millions of vehicles.
Don’t forget the cost of inspection stations, and new administrative costs to follow the new law.
Most inspections I’ve had done on my Mustang have been less ‘how worn are your tires’ and more ‘what cam do you have in it?’
If you’re driving a British made car, I should think it would be prudent to inspect the lights at least every month.
Lucas Electrics: home before dark.
I can’t see what the fuss is about. They stopped annual inspections in my part of Australia years ago. Perhaps they need to look at some statistics to actually check if there is a change. The number of accidents due to vehicle defects doesn’t seemed to have changed and in 2018 we averaged 13,300 kms (approx 8,300 miles). The police do ‘defect’ cars for issues like bald tires etc if they notice them.
It’s spelled “baybies” you German twit…Carry on by all means. /s
It sounds like politicians arguing with specific non-profits. “We are going to save you a TON of money reducing the frequency of these inspections”. “The government is going to kill millions more of us with unsafe cars on the road”….. both sides are blowing farts. Not saving a ton is the reality and not going to kill millions more either….. If you want to get your car MOT every year, go for it. Just don’t have it submitted and call it a service visit… lol
Oh man I felt horrible for you over Brewer-gate. Some people were determined to be offended when it was so clearly inadvertent.
I’m a Brit and I come down somewhere in the middle. The comparison with Germany isn’t totally valid – the German test *is* stricter than the UK one.
MOTs are basically a good thing but they can be infuriatingly arbitrary and somewhat subjective. For example it’s now an automatic fail if your car’s CEL is on, but some cars do this for fun and it doesn’t really mean anything.
I won’t be sad if it becomes biannual, but equally I’m not sure it’s actually a good idea.
Here’s my theory on the British (all tongue in cheek of course). From 1066 to 1945, the British have been either attacking other countries or getting attacked. England has invaded something like 97% of all countries on the globe. Since the 40’s we have had nearly 8 decades of RELATIVE peace. That leaves England with a lot of nervous energy that they used to get out of their system with a good battle. Now, with no good outlet for that energy, they can’t help but worry incessantly that small changes to regulation will lead to an apocalypse.
England is a TEENY TINY landlocked country, both in size and population, and they have annual national testing. The USA is orders of magnitude larger in population, bigger in area, and there is no national testing.
What these twits are moaning on and on about makes no sense. Now, India, there’s a country that needs national vehicle inspections.
England is hardly landlocked. It takes up most of the area of the island of Great Britain and has lots of coastline.
Lets not even start on the whole England Britain thing.
Landlocked:
adjective
(especially of a country) almost or entirely surrounded by land; having no coastline or seaport.
Annually or Biannually?
“For example it’s now an automatic fail if your car’s CEL is on, but some cars do this for fun and it doesn’t really mean anything.”
Ummmm…..
I’ll give you an example: the VW Passat (a 2001?) my mum drove when I was a kid. Despite only ever being serviced at ludicrous expense by a VW dealer, its CEL was probably illuminated for something like 95% of the time she owned the car.
No doubt some parameter was out of whack accord to the ECU, but the fact is the car drove absolutely fine.
Another example: my E91 used to throw a light intermittently. New VANOS solenoids fixed it. The car drove perfectly and any effect on emissions would no doubt have been dwarfed by other variables. And yet that would have been an MOT fail. That’s dumb.
Yeah, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t mean anything. When your CEL is on it means that there is or was an error in your system. If there isn’t anything actively wrong then its a diagnostic tool, it means you need to take the car in and get someone to look at it to see what is wrong.
If the CEL is set because there is an active error the computer is going to put the system in Open Loop.
Open Loop means that the computer isn’t registering input from the sensors on the engine, it isn’t getting feedback. When this happens the ECU is going to default to a known safe parameter that is going to not harm the engine and still get you down the road. The problem with this is that this set of safe parameters is not the optimum parameters for the engine. Your mileage is going to suffer. Your power is going to suffer. The engine might burn a little dirtier. All of these can happen when the engine is in Open Loop. Driving around long term with an active CEL can cause minor to catastrophic damage to an engine. (in this case, minor meaning removing 5-10% of the engine’s total life, and catastrophic meaning catastrophic.)
Now, when everything works properly, the system asks for and receives feedback from the sensors in the system (so it closes the feedback loop) and goes into Closed Loop. At that point MPG, power, emissions, etc get better.
So if your CEL is on A) there’s nothing actively wrong, but the system saw something out of whack and you should go get it checked out before it permanently goes out or B) something is actively wrong and you are damaging your wallet, your engine, and the environment.
Because you don’t understand why something is happening doesn’t mean nothing is happening. The man-hours that go into programming when that little light go on and off cost the manufacturer an incredible amount, if they could get away with not having to do that they would.
Could they spend a few of those hours programing in or promulgating meaningful error messages?
If p0126 said “your emgine thermostat is (probably) stuck open” rather than “engine below stable operating temperature” I’d have been able to actually replace the dn thing 4 years earlier rather than just saying “oh no, but nippy is it” and resetting it every couple months.
100% agree obd2 and such are excellent systems and when you see a CEL you should figure out why. Just wish they could actually put that in either the computer or in the (online) manual
They can’t do that though.
Primary reason is that OBDII is a system that they started to build in the early-mid 90s and was put into effect in ’96 in the US. Every modern system is built upon something that is that old so there are massive compromises compared to what you’d find with a brand new system today. Even then they would likely just upgrade OBDII to a newer system so you’d still have the bones of OBDII hidden underneath.
Another reason is that P0126 isn’t “Engine below stable operating temperature” it is “Insufficient Coolant Temperature for Stable Operation” its a subtle difference, but an important one. The first is that the engine itself is below stable operating temp, the second is that the coolant is below stable operating temp. Both have a host of causes that could be the root reason the code is being set, but the second specifically lends itself to half a dozen different problems outside of the thermostat being open. The sensor could be out of whack, the wiring for the sensor could be damaged, the fans could be on all the time cooling it too much, could be the air intake temp sensor, could be the wrong coolant and the sensor isn’t calibrated for it.
So, as a result, you have to troubleshoot.
If you want them to tell you exactly what the issue is, you’re going to need them to increase complexity enough to account for every single one of those problems and more. If you have one single problem that can be traced to two or more things, you’re going to end up needing a troubleshooting guide.
My R56 Cooper Clubman used to throw one up every now and again to keep me on my toes. First time it happened I booked in into BMW in a panic. Even they said don’t worry about it if it goes out and the red CEL doesn’t come on.
Washington State has no emissions testing whatsoever, (we got rid of it in 2020 because the sate realized it’s a giant waste of time and money) and no vehicle inspections whatsoever.
It’s awesome here. Swap whatever engine you want into whatever you want, long as it has a VIN, you’re good to go!
We have no “points on your license” whatever that is bullsh*t is, we have legal weed and great beer, no state income tax, fantastic weather, a great economy, no bugs that will eat you alive, light until 10PM in the summer, 10 out of 10.
SO STAY AWAY.
You shush! We don’t need anyone else up here! EVERYBODY! IT SUCKS! Rain 90% of the time and an active volcano threatening Seattle and the Cascadia fault might go at any time and kill millions and the wildfires and associated smoke are absolutely terrible! SO STAY AWAY for your own good! Especially you Californians.
Aww come on, no other state wants us either! What am I supposed to do when I retire? OH I get it, go north to Oregon, stop there…
FLAHrida
That’s FloriDuh, but it’s a common mistake!
Nonono that’s the wrong take! There’s no need at all to go that far. I’m SURE you’ll find South Oregon very homely. The forest fires are almost at big as those you’re used to further South, and you avoid the nasty, nasty rain we get almost all year long up here further North. All year, I tell you! Definitely a better choice if you absolutely must wander north. Yessir, definitely..
Having grown up outside of Portland, married someone from Medford, and now living outside of Seattle, I appreciate this comment on so many levels.
[insert Blitz Weinhard ‘border patrol’ gif here]
and all the loonies that somehow couldn’t find enough cash to build their prepper compound in Idaho.
Idaho is going down the drain so fast it’s wild, it’ll be on the same level as some of the southern states here in twenty years or so, but hey, at least they’re encouraging the crazy people to move there.
“oh no, don’t leave, that would be terrible. lol.”
Ontario got rid of emissions testing a few years. The justification was that the major polluters are now off the road. The average car now is much cleaner than the 80’s and 90’s. We have to do a safety inspection when cars change hands but then not after that.
We have an emissions ‘test’ in PA but it’s just the OBD readiness check, which, I think is fine. What sucks is that its a ‘separate’ test and costs $60. Made sense when you had to put it on a roller and run a sniffer test since that’s 30-60 minutes of work with actual equipment that needed maintenance. Now, though? It should just be included in the normal inspection.
Also, with the old Ontario emissions testing, the standards were roughly at participation trophy levels. I had an old Ford Escort that was missing the catalytic convertor when I bought it, and it still only barely failed in one of the dozen or so metrics.
But you get trenchfoot when you work on vehicles in that state!
I live in a state with zero inspections other than having a Tire Boy or Tire Girl read off the OBD2 every other year and internet it to the state office of such data, and I haven’t gotten dead from a car in poor repair even once.
In fact, our 300k+ mile (odometer broke) Buick passed that “emissions” inspection with a solid misfire, a gas tank leak, and the iconic 3800 Series II intake manifold leak (and you will know them by their sins), and I still didn’t even get lightly injured driving it.
Things will be okay, British friends.
best part of the OBD2 emissions testing?
they have the power to create new vehicles.
My limited grasp on the English language leaves me ill-equipped to express the sheer magnitude of my agreement with your resident Brit’s point here: “It’s typical conservative ‘look we did something’ that actually costs very little,”
Very on brand for our nation these days sadly!
Personally I don’t care a whole lot either way – the test is cheap enough and quick enough that reducing how often we do it is of minimal benefit, and I appreciate getting a small list of things to fix every year where I’d surely get a larger list every 2 years if we spaced the tests out more! Really minor benefits either way imo.
Methinks thine keyboard be defective.
“dries literally as fast as they freaking want to”
I think this should be “drives”?
I am sure there are some physics that limit the drying rate of Germans.
Americans, on the other hand, have their freedoms.
“There’s more fro iNews, who writes”
I think this should be “…more from”
iNews may have a fro, but, really, who cars?
( deliberate misspelling ).
“As an engineer and experienced at-home mechanic, I have a good idea of what can make a car genuinely dangerous. ”
Those are “must haves”, presumably.
A lot of states require annual smog and/or safety inspections. It’s pretty annoying, I think doing it every two years should suffice.
If the British government actually wanted to reduce Britons’ expenses, they could part-subsidize the cost of yearly MOTs.
My idea was vehicles less than 5 years old are exempt, 5-10 is every 2 years and 10+ is yearly unless it’s driven less than 5000 miles or 8000 km.
Actually the lower miles driven vehicles are more likely to have issues and less likely to be noticed by the owner
I’m not sure what’s funnier – the idea that biannual MOTs represent a serious threat to public health and safety or the idea of accepting advice on vehicle from David “a bit of rust won’t hurt” Tracy…
define a bit of rust
Its a sliding scale depending where you are on that scale
I have a feeling the average Brit agrees with DT about this.
I do, but mainly because it would push the niggling fear I may have to pay for weird Lexus parts another 12 months into the future. I have already spent enough money on theoretical issues the ECU decided it had, thank you very much, and would like my wallet to be left alone as the car is clearly fine.
Oh man! My favorites!
The US has Uncle Sam and the UK has John Bull. Do other countries have mascots?
We have a self-perceived President.
Looks like 45 got confused again when trying to dress like Uncle Sam.
Was there supposed to be a story here?
Ah there it is..I came too early to the party.
We appreciate it your early arrival! We were still setting out the plates of deviled eggs and shrimp.
Hope you’re not serving beer with that combo LOL
(really need an edit feature)
Now those “shoddily-built Austin Minis and Hillman Imps” are MOT exempt.
Thank god.