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Gratuitous Gun Pic: Carcano Model 91TS (6.5x52mm)

Gratuitous Gun Pics, The Gun Thing

While browsing through Collectors recently, I came upon this old girl:

I have often sung the praises of the Mosin-Nagant M44 as a short and handy carbine, but I have to say, the Carcano (often incorrectly called the Mannlicher-Carcano) Model 91TS as pictured would do pretty well in the same role.  I’ve shot quite a few in my time — one even back in South Africa — and what impressed me most is the pure handiness of the carbine.  One of the common complaints about battlefield carbines is their recoil — less mass means more recoil, because Sir Isaac Newton will not be denied — but the M91’s little 6.5x52mm cartridge is an absolute gem, and I have no idea why the Italian Army replaced it with the larger (and not much more effective) 7.35x51mm cartridge in the reworked Model 38.  (Maybe they thought that size mattered.)

Anyway, that long, thin 156gr boolet means excellent sectional density and therefore quite adequate penetration on humans:

…but as with all old cartridges, there’s always that availability problem.  And with the state the ammo industry is in now, it’s even more scarce than usual.  Graf & Sons, normally my go-to guys when it comes to old military ammo, doesn’t have any in stock (surprise, surprise) and even when they do, it runs about $2 per trigger pull — unless you go with the lighter Prvi Partizan variant at a very reasonable $0.83 per round.

Had I known then what I know now (back in the early- to mid-2000s a.k.a. The Happy Times), I’d have snapped up a decent M91 carbine for about $95, which is about what they cost back then compared to over $400 nowadays, and a few hundred rounds of ammo for less than half of what it costs now.

But that hindsight is a bugger, innit?  Here’s the much-longer M91 rifle, just for comparison’s sake:

Way Too Much

Drive Time, Technology

Insty posted a link to the Car & Driver  long-term road test of the Porsche Cayenne SUV, and while I am generally a fan of Porsche (other than their Germanic penchant for over-engineering and the fact that all their cars are pig-ugly), there were still a couple of things pointed out in the study which set my teeth on edge, to whit:

The perfect long-term car is one that delivers 40,000 happy miles, and our 2019 Cayenne is well on its way to achieving that platonic ideal. It’s never left us stranded, and so far all of our gripes have been handled by the dealer.

You know what?  That reliability is a given nowadays, thanks to manufacturers like Honda and Toyota,  In fact, after shelling out the ~$100K for a fucking SUV, I would demand that nothing breaks in the first 40,000 miles.  But that’s not the end of it.

While that 10K service and recall work didn’t come with an invoice, the 20,000-mile service reminded us that Porsche ownership is just as expensive as it sounds. It set us back $632. In addition to the work done at the 10K visit, the 20K visit calls for replacement of both the cabin and the engine air filters. The dealer also replaced some worn-out wipers for $82.

I know, I know:  if you can’t afford the maintenance, don’t buy the car.  Over six hundred for a lousy 20k service, and eighty-plus bucks for a pair of windshield wipers?   Ah don’ theenk so, Manfred.

But that’s not the worst of it.  Enter the most useless fucking technology ever inflicted on car owners, all for the sake of eco-consciousness:

An aggressive stop-start system often kills the engine too early, and the restart occasionally comes with a horrible driveline thud. Disabling stop-start eliminates the thud, but we can’t help but wonder if the occasional transmission stumble on cold mornings is related and a sign of something else going on with the ZF automatic.

I have said it before, and I’ll say it again:  if I buy any car, this stupid stop-start bullshit would be turned off before I left the dealership.  (And if it couldn’t be turned off permanently, it’s to a different car brand I’d be going.)  As for the Cayenne, any kind of “driveline thud” is a Bad Thing.  I can’t believe the C&D testers didn’t address the issue after the first hundred miles, let alone after forty thousand.  (Don’t even get me started on the engineering philosophy behind an “aggressive stop-start system, or we’ll be here all day.)

I seldom pay much attention to new-car tests because all new cars are going to be okay.  It’s the long-term tests that are interesting because that’s what exposes faulty materials, engineering or design.

And I’m sorry, but all the joys of “90mph cruising” (with the concomitant shitty fuel consumption) don’t  compensate for all the above.

Synchronized

Friends and Family

One of the things that always amazed me was that in any random group of more than a dozen people, the odds of at least two people sharing a birthday were so good it didn’t merit making book — it was almost a dead cert.

But on this 7th day of December, it still amazes that I have three people in my immediate circle of family / close friends who share a birthday today:  Longtime Friend Trevor, step-daughter-in-law Kerryn and step-nephew Mark — all South Africans, by the way.

And only one of them turned 21:

…although it was Mark, not Kerryn who reached that milestone.  She, however, gets this one:

…and lastly, Trevor’s:

I said he was one of my oldest friends…

Happy birthday to all of you !!!!

Provenance

Entertainment, The Gun Thing

I understand the concept of “provenance” — I sometimes call it “touching history”, in that when one can establish through an object some kind of lineage which can take one back in time, it’s always interesting.  It’s why people continue to brave all the hassle and potential ills of going to Egypt, just to see and stand next to the Sphinx and the Pyramids.

I get all that.  I’ve spoken how it felt to show the kids a church in Austria which had been built in 937AD, or going to a pub somewhere in southern Germany which had first served beer in 1256AD (and smelled like it — Daughter:  “Eeewwww do you think they’ve cleaned the floors since then?”).

Those are all Good Things, and that kind of provenance is wonderful.

Much less wonderful is this nonsense:

The pistol used by the late Sir Sean Connery in the first ever James Bond movie – the 1962 classic Dr. No – has sold at auction for $256,000 (£190,000).

Now granted, the James Bond movies brought the old Walther PP/PPK back from the dead — it was never that great a pistol, despite being the sidearm of several European police departments — but… a quarter-million for a studio prop?

I don’ theenk so, Scooter.

I’ve never understood “collectibles” when applied to movie rubbish — Judy Garland’s Wizard of Oz  shoes fetched some ungodly amount of money a while back (can’t be bothered to look it up) — and I’ve always considered this kind of thing to be akin to the groupie syndrome.  I mean, who wouldn’t pay a boatload of money for Sonny Corleone’s bullet-riddled and (fake-)blood-drenched shirt from The Godfather, as somebody apparently did back in 2003?

Well, I wouldn’t, for starters, nor for any piece of make-believe “heritage”.  Lord knows I love guns, but emptying out the old bank account for a piece of historical gunnery — even for Frank James’s Remington revolver?  Nuh-uh.

And coming back to the Bond thing:  Ian Fleming was a fine writer, but he didn’t know shit about guns.  I think his original Bond gun was a Beretta .22 pistol, later “upgraded” to the .25 ACP and finally to a Walther  (.32 ACP, not the .380 ACP as in the movie prop), as though this was the very apogee of weaponry a spy should use.  Hell, even back in the late 1950s, those guns were already in disfavor as sidearms.

As the expression / cliche goes:  A fool and his money are soon parted.  And this is just the latest proof of the thing.