On a recent Saturday, I was at a small community picnic. I was chatting with a young man who knows my son through the local fire company. This guy is perhaps 25, but very well traveled internationally, both with his parents and on his own. We’re talking about cars (natch!) and he remarked on his being taken aback when renting a car in South Africa not too long ago. It was his first encounter with “right-hand drive / left side of the road.” He explained that the experience threw him for a loop ’til he got comfortable.
“Have you ever driven right hand?” he asked me.
“Yes, I’ve driven a lot in Scotland and UK,” I said.
“How did you learn to do it?”
“Well,” I said, “I’d driven RHD cars over here several times.”
“Really? How?”
“Easy. I’ve always been around British cars and you get to know people. Perhaps you go to a club meeting or a show
and chat up somebody with, say an old Triumph or something, and he let’s you take it around the block.”
“Oh,” he says, “you ride motorcycles, too?”
“Umm, no. I don’t ride. Never have. Why?”
He paused and then with a bemused look, asked: “Did Triumph make cars, too?”
— Jim Taylor