In message <08d801c89478$7de5d5e0$d18c2d4b@brandthome>, William Brandt 
<[log in to unmask]> writes
>Well as long as we are on car parts and such this is a mystery to me:
>
>The Brits invented disc brakes (I think the Jaguar was the first to 
>have them) - the rotating circular piece of steel that the pads grab 
>onto is appropriately called - the DISC - at least in the UK.
>
>Here we call them disc brakes but the "disc" is called the rotor.

For us, the rotor is in the distributor. It's the bit the good guy takes 
off the bad guys' automobiles so that when he escapes with the heroine, 
the bad guys' cars won't start, and they can only chase him in the one 
he didn't have time to jigger....

>For consistency one would think we'd call them "rotor brakes" but I digress...

>And I'd always heard that the fender was the wheel enclosure - a fender 
>as a term was really more appropriate in the 1920s-30s when a fender 
>was over the top half of a wheel but the term as stayed through today 
>when a "fender" is really just part of the bodywork. I suppose the 
>British term "boot" as a similar origin when the earliest "boots" were 
>simply trunks at the back of the car.

Before cars, horse-drawn coaches had boots, which were a closed 
compartment at the back of the vehicle.

> And we call the "boot" the "trunk" which is a similar anachronism...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_boot

The car here has a real trunk on the back.

But your trunks have decklids, whereas we have bootlids.

And you have a hood where we have a bonnet, and we have a hood (on a 
convertible) where you have a top...

We have car boot sales, where you have garage sales. And so on :-)

>Bill (who would like to test drive an Elise)

Well, what's stopping you? Or does your local Lotus [1] dealer qualify 
his customers a bit too closely?

Roy

[1] Loads Of Trouble, Usually Serious

I had a friend with a Lotus Elan, driving with the electric windows down 
with his girlfriend when it started to rain. They both put their windows 
up at once, which overloaded its wheezy electrical system and the wiring 
loom (not just the fuses) gave out. The car was gone a few weeks while 
the dealership and Lotus rewired it.....

-- 
Roy Brown        'Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be
Kelmscott Ltd     useful, or believe to be beautiful'  William Morris

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