What? Where?
Seriously, I’ve owned four Mustangs, an F-150, an F-250, a Galaxie 500, and a Mercury Cougar in model years from '64½ to '78, and I don’t remember the word “litre” on any of them. Jog my memory.
Oh, and as for the OP, if the US goes metric at all, it’ll probably be gradually and take forever.
'66 Galaxie 500 with the police interceptor package. ‘7-Litre’ on the lower part of the front fenders.
The U.S. has no need to go ‘metric’ as most people think of it. We already produce the majority of our tools and consumables in packages with labeling that has both matric and standard measurements. Well, the tools are either standard OR metric but you know what I mean.
American scientists use the metric system as a standard of measurement consistently and will probably continue to do so as long as the rest of world’s scientists do the same.
And I’ve never seen a Ford with litre spelled out on it anywhere in my life and I was a mechanic for damn near twenty years.
Cool, thanks. Don’t believe I ever saw a 500 interceptor, so I never would have noticed.
Pretty amazing as I’ve done a Google image search and the only example I’ve come up with does NOT contain anything on the front fender.
Just to be thorough though, I also Googled “1966 Galaxie 500” and Police interceptor package" separately and together and found zilch.
This page has an image of the badge.
No offense Johnny, but you may just be remembering wrong…or perhaps just THINK that’s the way it should be spelled because of your love of “everything that is British”.
I could be wrong though.
I had to look, too. I’d never seen one, either.
No, it doesn’t. What it DOES have is an image of an advertising campaign.
See the link above.
Well shit…after looking at the Wikipic in closeup, I have to apologize.
You still act like you wish you lived in England though.
Gotta love the simulpost though.
I’m glad to hear that… A few years ago, my mom and I were in Ireland, and we noticed that all of the speed limit signs were in mph, without any units specified (here in the States, the signs at least say “65 MPH”, rather than just “65”). Of course, we’re Americans, so we didn’t have any trouble figuring them out, but it still seemed rather odd. And to some folks, it would be a problem: At one point, we were on the motorway behind another car that was absolutely crawling… We eventually realized that the car had German plates, and the driver must have thought the limit was in kph.
You do still sell beer in pints, though, right? So the metric system still hasn’t completely taken hold.
I could have sworn that the badge on dad’s car was on the lower fender behind the wheel arch. (His was a dark blue two-door coupé, BTW.) But I distinctly remembered the badge.
Yes, i would like to live in England. Or Italy. Italy rocks. I haven’t been to France yet.
But as for my spelling, it was influenced at an early age. First, by dad’s Ford. And from reading the manual that came with my mom’s '66 MGB a few years later. And by reading books written by foreign authors. And by watching British shows on PBS. If I had grown up in Iowa or some place, or if dad hadn’t bought a car with ‘litre’ written on it, or if I hadn’t gotten an appreciation of other cultures by living in Japan when I was little, I probably wouldn’t spell the way I do. It’s just the way I grew up.
So to steer this back to the OP…
The metric system always made more sense to me. 5,280 feet in a mile? 1,000 m in a km is nice and round. Every motorcycle and car I’ve owned has had its engine displacement measured in cc. 1/32"? 0.8mm is easier. I was all for it when I was in school. The teachers seemed enthusiastic. (I don’t know if they were directed to be, or if they really were.) But there were the jokes about how difficult life would be if we went metric. There would be no more inch-worms. They’d be 2.54cm-worms. Road signs posted in miles and lm may have seemed like a good way of easing people into the metric system, but there was no reason for people to think in km when they can just read the miles. And in Southern California I got the idea that people thought Celcius would be confusing. ‘It’s 30º outside? I’d better wear a warm jacket!’
I think that there is just too much inertia behind the Imperial system to change voluntarily to metric. For the U.S. to change it will have to be rammed down our throats.
God, is wishing you lived somewhere else some violation of SDMB etiquette I don’t know about? puts New Mexico brochures under the bed
The US has already “gone metric” to an extent. We use metric at work when it’s called for, and decimal inches when they are called for and it just doesn’t seem to be an issue.
This one’s especially ironic. Have you ever actually seen an inchworm? I have, and they were all just about a centimeter long. Maybe there’s regional variations, but I’ve never seen one that was even close to an inch. So if we wanted to be nitpickingly correct, we should call them “centimeterworms”, or “.3937inch-worms”.
What jsgoddess said - and for that matter, what
the master said.
Soda pop by the liter, milk by the gallon. We run 5k races, don’t bother to think what a ‘k’ is. Figure grams of fat when we’re dieting; when we’re not, we go for the 16-ounce steak. Go to the hair stylist and like as not, pick up the 500 mL bottle of rinse. Our science is in metric, our engineering is in english units a lot; our military is in metric.
Of course, the British are still slightly confused themselves: as I understand it, they use kilograms for everything else, but measure body weights in ‘stones’ and will be quite perplexed if you give yours in any other units.
I make out a couple good reasons for going metric:
It’s not going away. If the U.S. could make the metric system go away, there might be more justification to sticking to the english system as the one and only system of units. Since the metric system isn’t going away - it just isn’t - we might as well get used to it.
The metric system really is an easier system, though admittedly it can take some effort to get a ‘feel’ for it. Still, there’s a lot to be said for not going through the hassle of measuring something as 134 inches, then having to divide by 12, not 10, to figure out what that “really” means. As I posted in another thread, how do you figure how much oil to add to 7 gallons of gas to get a 1 to 50 mix?
…but it will simply happen when it does…
I’ve noticed that some soft drinks are starting to appear in 500 mL bottles, instead of 16 oz bottles. Larger 2 liter bottles have been available for many years. The US auto industry has used metric in design and engineering work for many years now as well. This sort of situation, where converting to metric is more convenient for manufacturers, is doing more to spread the metric system then autocratic government decrees ever have.
For some things, like road signs, the US might well never convert. Changing all the road signs to kilometers would be a huge expense, for no real benefit. This being America, arguments like “but that’s how everyone else does it” don’t carry much weight.
The point isn’t to make it easier for us to measure things. It’s to make it easier to communicate those measurements to the rest of the world when toaster sizes aren’t accurate enough.
Like the English language, it’s just an attempt to standardize communications and make life easier for everyone involved. If you’re in America, chances are your state uses miles, pounds, and degrees Fahrenheit like the rest of the nation. Now imagine what’d happen if the state to your right used kilometers/kilograms/Celsius and the state to your left used parsecs/stones/Kelvin. Every time you travel, you’d have to worry about converting the temperature to know what to pack. You’d have to convert weights so you know how much you’re allowed to pack. You’d have to convert distances so you know how long you can expect to drive and how much gas you’ll have to buy. It’s doable, yes, but it gets annoying after a while – especially when you start making the inevitable mistakes. That’s what the rest of the world has to deal with because we’re too lazy to switch.
In the real world, it does occasionally make a difference. Simple things like screwdrivers and wrenches come in different sizes that are almost the same but not quite, requiring annoyingly precise measurements and multiple trips to the hardware store. The paper we use (8.5x11/paper) is just a bit off from the A4 size that much of the rest of the world uses – so we need special folders, binders, notebooks, copiers, printers, fax machines, etc., not to mention the paper itself. Our scientists have to work with a system of measurement they’re not native to, resulting in a waste of time at best and expensive mistakes at worst. It might not be a BIG deal in the grand scheme of things, but it’s still an inconvenience.
I say old chap, would you care for a spot of tea and a scone?