TOP GEAR in Argentina

The fact they were carrying multiple number plates (these "bell end" ones and the "HI VAE" ones) makes their claims of "coincidence" seem even more dishonest.

But a BBC Top Gear spokesperson said: "The number plate was not used at any point during filming.

"It was originally intended to be in the programme's final scene, a game of car football, but that ending has changed."

^ How is that not a reasonable explanation for Jeremy having a bell end plate?

Lets see, is Jeremy called a bell end all the time? Yup. Is car football common on Top Gear? Yup. Is football big in Argentina? Yup.

A perfectly reasonable explanation that people are once again twisting for their own narrative.
 
TG, and especially Jezza, for the love of God please stop causing ruckus on every country you visited. Sure the thing about war bit might be facts, you guys can be full of yourself about British stuff, but the world doesn't work like that. There are just people who won't take lightly for it. It just that's what today's humanity is.

On the other hand...

The plates on the cars used by Clarkson?s fellow presenters James May and Richard Hammond also aroused suspicions in Argentina. The plate on May?s Lotus contained the number 646, which Juan Manuel Romano, an official in the province of Ushuaia, suggested could be a reference to the 649 Argentinean dead in the Falklands conflict. He noted that Hammond?s Ford Mustang had 269 in its plate, close to the 255 losses suffered by the British.

?The numbers are not identical but they are very close. It could be a coincidence but we can?t risk that it isn?t and in that way affecting the sensibilities of the people of Tierra del Fuego,? he said, demanding the cars be not used in public spaces.

This is ridiculous indeed. Just because its close doesn't mean its a coincidence. And also this happens after at least a week the TG guys filming there, i suspect there's also provocations from some Argentinians. I mean, if you're not happy about it, why don't you just cast them out (peacefully) since day one? With this stone throwing, you could also draw some fire from the Brits who's on the same view as Jezza isn't it? And if this escalates to something bad, what then? Surely there's also a lot of Argentinians that just want a peaceful life, you don't want to ruin them do you?

Personally i'm on the fence at this. In my view both parties are to blame for this, because as someone said here, this is what happens when a bunch of prideful nationalist idiots meets another bunch of prideful nationalist idiots.
 
Argentina loves flashing this banner around at football matches:

Argentina_2935012b.jpg

football-banner.jpg

"The Malvinas are Argentine"

FIFA even fined them for doing it right before the world cup.

So that's fine. But what Top Gear is being accused of is disrespectful and deserves a stoning? Fuck off. Argentina and delusional go well together.
 
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James May spoke about the 'Argentina incident' on Absolute Radio this morning:


Link
 
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I would really like to believe James, but I just can't. I do agree that you can read certain things into numberplates which it actually doesn't say if you really want to. However, with the 3 x digit plus 3 x letter number code of the dicussed number plates, there are not too many combinations which woult point towards the Falkland war, which is the dominating happening incorporating the UK and Argentina in how many decades? So let's be German and overanalyze it!

Let's try to squeeze "Falklands" or "Falklands War" into a 3 letter code. How many combinations can you find? One would assume that this combination would either need to be a representative part of the original word or a combination of the phonetically dominating letters in the correct order. For "Falklands", I can come up with:

Part of the original word:
FAL - ok
ALK - maybe
LKL - no
KLA - no
LAN - no
AND - no

As for phonetic combinations, the "F" definitely needs to be at the beginning to make the connection, the "A" sound in the middle and the "K" are the end are pretty much interchangeable in importance, the "L" is silent and the "S" adds a plural, so both are irrelevant. The 4 letters of "LAND" phonetically are pretty much equally important. So let's see what we get:

FAL - ok (also see above)
FAA - maybe
FAN - no
FAD - maybe
FKL - ok
FKA - no
FKN - maybe
FKD - maybe

So what if we change it to "Falklands War"? Well, adding the second word obviously robs us of possible combinations for the first word, so we win some and we lose some. The phonetically dominationg letter of "War" is "W", using the "A" or "R" seem too random to make sense. Let's see...

FAW - maybe
FLW - ok
FKW - maybe
FNW - no
FDW - no

Incorporating the "maybe"s, we end up with 9 different combinations of letters which may point to the Falklands or the Falklands War.

So what about the number? Obviously you can do many things with numbers like adding, mulitplying and so on, so you are open to a whole world of speculation. Anything can mean anything when you process it the right way. However, the most dominating number of a specific happening usually is the date, which itself is influenced by the timeframe in which the happening took place. The Falklands War lasted for a little over 2 months in 1982, so unless you point towards the start or end date, you have to go for the year. Using random days or months within the time of this war don't really make sense without linking them to the year. But how many 3-digit combinations are there that could be linked to the timeframe of the Falklands War?

198 - maybe, if you read it as "the 1980s"
982 - ok (probably the best number to point towards the year "1982" with a 3 digit code)
282 - maybe (as in 2nd (of April) '82, start date of the war, a bit far fetched)
482 - maybe (as in April '82, start date of the war)
682 - maybe (as in June '82, end date of the war)
215 - maybe (duration of the war: 2 months, 1 week, 5 days)

Beyond that it really becomes random, and one would have to face the claim of deliberately constructing something that isn't acually there. So let's conclude that, incorporating all "maybe"s, in terms of numbers we're looking at 6 combinations.

Now, let's take a step back and conclude what we're looking at here:
A television presenter is known to provoke people with a passion. To provoke the people of foreign nations, he likes to point out happenings where the United Kingdom dominated said nation in any way, e.g. in a war. For a challenge in his television show, this presenter found himself in a used car, a rare-to-find old Porsche. The challenge incorporates driving this car through Argentina. The last major clash between Argentina and the UK was the Falklands War in 1982. The number plate of said Porsche reads "H982 FKL", one of the few possible combinations (and even one of the even fewer which make the most sense) of letters and numbers which point towards the word "Falklands" and the year "1982". Despite the three presenters liking to banter each other with the manufacturers, models, nicknames or other information (such as the number plate) of their respective cars, none of them noticed this.

How much does that sound like a mere coincidence?
 
I would really like to believe James, but I just can't.

There's several options:

- they didn't do it deliberately and they had no idea. I find this impossible to believe
- they decided to go to Argentina and found/someone pointed them to a car with a "hilarious" number plate to use for the trip. I might be convinced to believe that
- they decided on the car, noticed the number plate and went "I know, lets go to Argentina!". This sounds very plausible
- they decided on the car and country to go to, then noticed the number plate and went "lol, that'll work". This also sounds very plausible
 
Just wondering, what does H1 VAE mean towards Argentinia?
 
Well, if you take the 1, that can be substituted back into the original plate to finish off the 1982. That'll leave H VAE, switch the letters around and you get "HAVE", which is obviously the TG folks saying that they have the winning side.


...or it could stand for "Hoi Vae" which is the sound people are making over all of these alleged license plate connections... :?
 
Well, if you take the 1, that can be substituted back into the original plate to finish off the 1982. That'll leave H VAE, switch the letters around and you get "HAVE", which is obviously the TG folks saying that they have the winning side.


...or it could stand for "Hoi Vae" which is the sound people are making over all of these alleged license plate connections... :?

Brava!!!!!!:thumbsup::clap:
 
I would really like to believe James, but I just can't. I do agree that you can read certain things into number plates which it actually doesn't say if you really want to. However, with the 3 x digit plus 3 x letter number code of the discussed number plates, there are not too many combinations which would point towards the Falkland war, which is the dominating happening incorporating the UK and Argentina in how many decades?

I, on the other hand, do believe him because I find his arguments logical.

If there is an H982 FKL, there must somewhere be an I982 FKL and if they really wanted to make a reference to the Falklands War, I would think they would have made an attempt to secure the car that had that plate and then re-register the 928 with it.

If there were 2000 / 200 / 20 Porsche 928s in Britain that met the necessary criteria and the one with the plate H982 FKL was a poor match for said criteria and that was the one they chose, I'd be inclined to be more skeptical. But when there were only 2 and the one with the H982 FKL plate best fit the necessary criteria, I'm inclined to give them the doubt.

I also look back on their other "cheap car road trips" where they did not undertake a deliberate effort to gravely insult the population so I do not see why they would chose to do so now.
 
I do believe the guys. Or at least believe them enough to think that it wasn't intentional in the way the media is saying.

They're stupid: but they're not that stupid.



PS, don't like James hair so short. ;)
 
In the days of that style plate the first letter was dictated by the year, the last three letters by the place you bought the car from. The middle three numbers you could pick yourself. Therefore someone buying a 928 is quite likely to pick 982 as their numbers, assuming someone has already had 928.
 
I, on the other hand, do believe him because I find his arguments logical.

If there is an H982 FKL, there must somewhere be an I982 FKL and if they really wanted to make a reference to the Falklands War, I would think they would have made an attempt to secure the car that had that plate and then re-register the 928 with it.

If there were 2000 / 200 / 20 Porsche 928s in Britain that met the necessary criteria and the one with the plate H982 FKL was a poor match for said criteria and that was the one they chose, I'd be inclined to be more skeptical. But when there were only 2 and the one with the H982 FKL plate best fit the necessary criteria, I'm inclined to give them the doubt.

I also look back on their other "cheap car road trips" where they did not undertake a deliberate effort to gravely insult the population so I do not see why they would chose to do so now.

James' whole argument hinges on "we wanted a Porsche, specifically one like that, and everything just happened from there" which may be true but it's also impossible to prove, so if you take that one away then his "defence" is pretty much gone. Could it have gone like that? Sure, but it just as well could have been that they had set their sights on several different cars (not necessarily of the same type because in a 2nd hand market for rare cars that's just not practical) then noticed the plate and went "lets get that one lol".

I still refuse to believe that no one noticed it at any point in time, you might as well start believing in the spaghetti monster because as probabilities go it's the better bet.
 
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