I'm with you on much of this, Brett.Estnische wrote:Roy, I am particularly fond of Germans. They kept my father and his family alive towards the end of the war. I also have a liking for their beer, food, thunderous football players and motor vehicles. However, when it comes to overthinking things, and turning that into a weakness, they are sometimes frustrating.
BMW have been manufacturing shaft drive motorcycles since Adam was a boy, but through poor choices in the mid-2000s their final drives turned to shit. Similarly, they decided to mount the rear brake disc on a spider made of aluminium, to save a few precious grams of unsprung weight. After they all fatigued cracked, they had to do a recall, but only after many owners had replaced them with steel ones anyway. Also, the fuel tanks were made of plastic to lower the centre of gravity - they too cracked and leaked fuel in proximity to the battery terminals.
VW 2.0 TSI owners will tell you similar tales about plastic timing chain tensioners, plastic inlet manifolds that fail after rocker cover gaskets leak oil onto them and expensive 'dry' DSG gearbox failures.
Wonderful ideas badly executed - arrggggghhhhh!
I even had a somewhat neurotic German girlfriend once (a Pälzerin- from Rheinland-Pfalz). She used to overdo things too, especially the green eyes.. 
As for the Estonian connection, well, I've seen (and bought) virtually all the Finnish and Estonian made movies about the War in the Baltic states (many Russian offerings too...). One of the best is- and it's variously titled depending on the source-"1944-Forced to Fight". It details the unwished for conflict created between fellow Estonians, culminating in the deciding clashes in late 1944- where Russian conscripts faced some SS
volunteers (and conscripts). In a way, this seemed like the height of futility, as the homeland was effectively lost anyway- irrespective of the sides the combatants fought on.
It's populated by plenty of T-34s and all too credible action. I'm sure you've seen it.I guess on the theme of 'hiding in plain sight' would apply to the real emissions data of VW diesel cars, concealed by software trickery.
Thus, it looks like our German cousins have lost none of their 'defensive' capacity to camouflage essential industries, much like hiding V2 facilities underground 
(er..not literally beats.. 
) 
support YOUR TOTM competition, I'm doing my part, are YOU?
