Posted on 05/02/2005 12:07:59 PM PDT by Stoat
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I hope that pic is of the actual car. If so, it is nice to see that the (now-)pope is a manly-man who can drive a stick.
Very sporty. A stick shift, too, I believe.
I guess you can take the pope out of germany, but you can't take the german out of the pope.
After reading that bit of the registration, it looks legit. Lucky guy!
Most Germans drive stick shifts. I was disgusted when I moved back to the U.S. and tried to find a minivan for my family with a stick. They have them over there, but they just don't exist over here.
I think most cars in Europe are sticks...
Why would anyone choose a stick in the first place?
I can understand if it's a sports car, but a minivan?
Sticks are fun for about a day.
And I'm a womanly-woman who drives a stick----so there!
Man, that's such a sweet ride! :P
droooooooolllll..........
Heh heh heh.... ;-)
Me too! I have to, or else I get bored while driving then start bird watching....
I also ride a motorcycle (NOT a scooter with an automatic!).
LQ
It's all about control. I can't stand when a car thinks it knows the best time to shift. It doesn't, I do. Maybe I'm going around a corner and don't want a downshift right at that moment to unsettle the suspension (yes, in a minivan). I find with automatics I learn when and how hard to hit the gas to make it shift when I want to anyway, never letting it shift on its own. The only automatic I'll buy is what Mercedes is coming out with, with F1-like paddle shifters so that it acts like a sequential.
My wife abhors automatics more than I do.
With a good automatic you never notice it shift. That's how mine is on my Nissan Frontier. I believe in a hilly enviro you gotta have a stick because that's where the auto gets in trouble. In a flat city, it's just a pain in the butt, and it's a huge hassle in a traffic jam. Not once in a while, but if you're having to deal with traffic regularly you get sick of it and one day you find yourself looking for a new car and you think, I'm getting an automatic. I'm crossing over to the dark side.
Did anyone else notice the irony inherent in this statement?
OLPE - A six-year-old Volkswagen once owned by Pope Benedict XVI that "was only driven to church on Sundays" was put up for auction on Thursday on the eBay Internet auction house website.
"It's still heavenly to drive," said Benjamin Halbe, who bought the VW Golf in January from a second-hand car dealer who claimed that the previous owner had been a senior Roman Catholic church official who drove it to Mass.
"The guy told me that the car had been blessed by a cardinal," said 21-year-old Halbe.
However, Ratzinger didn't actually drive the car. Read this published two days ago when the news of the auction appeared on FOX and around the world:
"I thought it was a salesman's yarn until I looked at the registration papers and saw that it had indeed belonged to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger," he said.
The car dealer, Kurt Schneider in the city of Siegen, pointed out that he had never actually said the previous owner had been the man who is now pontiff. But he acknowledged that Ratzinger had been a customer of long-standing.
"We didn't want to make a big deal out of it," Schneider said. "After all, we're in the business of dealing with customers and we don't want to abuse their trust."
Ratzinger's private secretary, who comes from Siegen, purchased cars from the dealership in the cardinal's name.
"His holiness has bought his cars here for some time and he comes to Siegen a couple of times a year and stops in," said Schneider.
However it is unclear who actually drove the car when Ratzinger owned it.
"We assume somebody else drove it for his holiness," said Schneider, who pointed out that Ratzinger has no driver's licence.
To each his own, brother.
Ah, he's a German.
He drove.
He probably just confessed after each trip. LOL.
Gotta agree with you there. If I lived in a high-density traffic area I'd probably ditch the stick. On trips to LI where my parents live my left leg aches from the clutch by the time I finally get to their house.
But in rural VT the stick is great, particularly in the snow. Lots more control....
LQ
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