What is the point of a Bangerpedia? Especially when there is the Interweb? If you are looking for affordable used cars it is possible within a few clicks to look at a decent colour picture, get the full specification, find out prices, check features and forums for problems and advice, then trawl through hundreds, possibly thousands of classified ads. Why then would you need a book which isn’t as good as that?
Well, if the Internet ever gets broken, or you lose service, then a piece of book shaped hardware may come in handy. Books are also very portable and can be used in all sorts of places, with or without WiFi. On the other hand I seem to have wasted an awful lot of time on this Bangerpedia and it would have more sense coming out in around 1993. Trouble is the models covered were available from 2000 to 2010, so that would have impossible, but interesting. Imagine trying to explain that Sports Futility Vehicles were the future to baffled, pilled out ravers?
If you like a sense of order in your life then it is nice to put everything, or rather every Banger in one place and it really would be difficult to have 755 tabs open on a computer, so maybe there is a point to having a hand held Bangerpedia.
Actually, I think the sole purpose of this Bangerpedia is to start arguments. I envisage many people, especially when they know more about cars than I do, to put me right, probably on Twitface. Not only that, Brian in Halifax will have owned a Renault (that I have slightly slagged off) and covered almost a million fault free miles in, and tell me I’m an idiot. He won’t be wrong of course, but this is my Bangerpedia and I’ll take any flak coming my way.
When I was a nipper I loved flicking through Observer’s Books and the excellent Motor Show Guides offered by national newspapers. Always found those better than the official guide. In effect this is a Banger Motor Show Guide. That’s because every car park, residential and high street is always choc full of prime Bangers. The Bangerpedia is the people’s guide as to what they might like to consider as their next set of wheels. Plus we have a ridiculous rating system involving Slog the Bangernomic Dog, where counterintuitively, it is the more dogs the better. I haven’t counted all of them, but Toyota seem to have a dog pound full of puppies.
Anyway, you can buy a real example via the evil Empire of Amazon. There might be a real copy that James Ruppert can sign for you and also some cheaper downloadable pdf versions at www.bangernomics.com
