I’m a big fan of the British TV show “Top Gear”.
I also reside in the US.
It’s a car show with comedic elements thrown in. A very enjoyable and very British show.
As such, they constantly refer to their speed in Miles Per Hour (MPH) and distance traveled in miles.
Why not metric for the Brits?
The alleged adoption of the metric system by the British has been somewhat overstated. They still hoist pints of beer and tend to measure distances (especially car-related) in miles. At least culturally, if not officially.
Road distances are measured in miles in the UK. It’s also very common to measure human height and weight in feet, inches, stones and pounds. Beer comes in pints.
Don’t forget fuel economy is measured in Miles Per Gallon, and the gallon not being the same as an American gallon.
And a persons weight is still commonly expressed as “stones and lbs” , with a “stone” being (I believe) 14 lbs.
ah. I see. Not the entire world embraces all that is good and metric.
You mean they lied to me in 3rd grade?
Thanks for the quick responses.
how much is a stone?
They are clearly not using ‘English’ measurements, as witnessed in the latest show (Series 15 e5) where James May reports the top speed of the Buggati Veyron test vehicle as 440 km/hr and Jeremey Clarkson ask ‘What’s that in Church of England?’ (267mph or something like that). Seriously, they do often quote vehicle weights in Kg and other measurements in m or mm as needed, but speed and such is normally mph.
OTOH, I think the Top Gear Australia guys used Kilowatts when discussing engine power, at least on the one episode I saw.
1 stone = 14 pounds
And to make things truly complicated, fuel is sold in litres. Working out my mpg without a calculator is beyond me.
Or 6.35kg.
Because we use miles. What made you think we didn’t?
James was in Germany, was he not?
Also, the GPS device (or accelerometer or whatever it was) stuck to the dash only displayed in Km/h, so I think they stressed the 440km/h figure to make it obvious when he reached it. If they had used the mph figure it would not have been as easy for the viewing public to understand.
It is very unusual (in everyday life) to measure road speed in km/h here in the UK.
He tested the Buggati in Germany, hence the km/h measurement, but delivered that line back in the Top Gear Studio - I thought Jeremy’s ‘Church of England’ retort was pretty funny, but I guess I’m the only one. As has been mentioned, they normally use miles for distances and mph for speed trials (even when travling through France or Japan) - and it seems they use kilos for weight (even Jeremy, although he tosses in the occasional stone), and are all over the place when discussing fuel consumption (gallons predominate, but litres are mentioned often enough).
And this is NOT like “How It’s Made”, where the original (Canadian) shows use standard Metric measurements, but the American versions are ‘dubbed’ (using different narrators) in customary units.
No, me too 
407 km/h, not 440 (253 mph). And yes, he was in Germany, at VW’s Ehra-Lessian test facility.
Americans are led to believe that Britain is, if not the center of the metric universe, then at least an enthusiastic adopter.
This is especially odd because Imperial measurements are referred to as “English measurements” over here.
Well, Imperial measurements are used in England, so that would make perfect sense – if you didn’t actually mean the somewhat different United States customary units when you said it.
This idea seems to crop up a lot on these boards and elsewhere. I’m interested in why exactly Americans are led to believe that. Who tells this odd rumour?
Funnily enough, a car my sister bought recently only has kmph on the speedometer. Most cars I’ve seen previously in this country have had both kmph and mph. Speed limits in the Republic of Ireland are now exclusively in kmph whereas in Northern Ireland they’re exclusively in mph. It’s all a tad confusing.
In football (soccer) we refer to the 12-yard line and the 6-yard line, and a shot being 30 yds from goal.
Rugby, however, uses metres (22m line).
Soda is sold in litres - a 2l bottle is the normal “family size”.
I buy meat in kilos but my mum still shops in lbs and oz.
My satnav in the car measures distance in km, but that’s only because I’m lazy - I tend to cruise at 120kph on the motorway (approx. 75mph), so 2km per min makes it much easier to calculate how long I have left to drive.
Basically we pick and choose which system we use, and quite often mix it together:
“Drive 5 miles past the junction, and our house is about 50m after the supermarket”.
The Uk is in a weird state wrt metric/imperial.
I started school just after decimalisation and have no idea what old pounds,shillings and pence are. However, while i couldnt tell you my weight in kg ( i am 12 stone 6 ) i know my car weighs 1410kg.
Our most famous cockup was the Beagle2 Mars probe which never made it due to a metric/imperial misunderstanding:
“The metric/imperial mix-up that destroyed the craft was caused by a human error in the software development.[1] The thrusters on the spacecraft, which were intended to control its rate of rotation, were controlled by a computer that underestimated the effect of the thrusters by a factor of 4.45. This is the ratio between a pound force (the standard unit of force in the imperial system) and a newton (the standard unit in the metric system). The software was working in pounds force, while the spacecraft expected figures in newtons; 1 pound force equals approximately 4.45 newtons.”
The other side of the coin is that a fruit and veg seller in Sunderland was prepared to go to prison to defend his right to sell a pound of bananas.
“Today 36-year-old Thoburn will appear before three magistrates at a court in Sunderland, accused of contravening section 11 (ii) of the 1985 Weights and Measures Act, after he was caught allegedly committing a criminal offence by selling a pound of bananas using imperial scales rather than metric.”
This is what makes us so special !!!