James May's Cars of the People - Second Season English Subtitles

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The shape of the Boeing B29 Super Fortress is deeply

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etched on the conscience of humankind,

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being the only aircraft ever to have delivered an atomic weapon in anger.

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And it bears little comparison with this -

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a humble, mid-sized Japanese hatchback.

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And yet you could argue that, long term, this has been the more

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destructive weapon, one that lay waste to acres and acres of industry.

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And it gives rise to a curious new maxim for the modern age -

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to win at cars, first you must lose at war.

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Go!

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"If I'd asked people what they wanted," wrote Henry Ford,

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"they would have said, 'Faster horses.'"

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The coming of internal combustion relieved the horse and the donkey,

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and the mule and the elephant, of their burdens.

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And that was a good thing.

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But these beasts still have something to teach us.

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Because they're all equipped with a very intelligent 4x4 drive system.

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A horse is rarely stuck.

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An elephant doesn't generally spin off on a bend

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and throw you into a ditch.

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This is a model of KITT,

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from the 1980s TV series Knight Rider with the Hoff.

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And this is the 1966 jet-powered Batmobile.

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The fantasy cars of TV and cinema

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were formed by our dreams of the car of the future.

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We liked the idea of a car that would talk to us,

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that knew where it was going, that would fly

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and we wondered if it could actually drive itself.

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Did anything come of the wild imaginings

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of the creators of these things?