Quote Originally Posted by Zardoz View Post
I saw something in a couple of the photo threads lately that I wondered about, but not enough to want to derail those threads.
But since this tread has popped up again, I have to say I find British car shows, or car shows in general, a bit out of place at a Highland games/Celtic festival setting.
Virtually every single car, truck and motorcycle on the plant has overhead valves, which control either the way in which fuel finds its way into the combustion chamber, or the exhaust gases find their way out, or a combination of both processes necessary to the "breathing" of the reciprocating internal combustion engine.

This system of precisely timed opening and closing valves was invented by David Dunbar Buick, a Scotsman from Dundee who moved to the United States. In the early days of the last century he founded Buick Motors, one of the few remaining brands now built by General Motors. Of course John Dunlop, another Scot, invented the pneumatic tire, something else fitted to virtually everything from wheelbarrows to race cars. Scotland also had, at one time, a viable auto industry (an early Agryll is a fabulous machine and the equal of a contemporary Daimler or Rolls-Royce) and as a lad I can well remember Hillman Imps churning out of the factory in Scotland faster than they rusted way in England!

So, car shows (British themed or not) are often included as part and parcel of Scottish Games as a salute to the mechanical inventiveness of the Scots, without whose contributions society would be far less mobile.