That made Oi chuckle

Aha! Mounted on the upper end of the bootlid, in the approved works
style?

I had a kiddie flash one like that at me (although not from a Mini) as
he thought my lights were a bit bright. I was on dipped beam at the
time, although my use of (then uncommon) Cibie headlights and halogen
bulbs deceived him. I educated him by bringing the other four Cibie
units into play, two of which were about level with his rear window.
He parked - somewhat unconventionally, but remarkably quickly.

 

Fraser Johnston wrote:

[illuminating the whole world]

Ah, Super Oscars. Great lights for their time, prolly the best
available until the mid-80s. I used to have four, mounted two-up,
two-down on angle-iron mounts sticking out from the front of the car
like scaffolding. Wrote off a nearly-new Mazda with them, when he
stopped halfway onto a roundabout when I was looking to see if I could
get out as well - and I could have and so could the car behind me, but
he decided he didn't want to, so I gave him a right good shove up the
arse.

Super Oscars had spring-mounted lenses that would retract into the
shell, given a push. The total damage to my Escort was the lights -
not broken, just creased across the backs of the shells where the
bonnet lip made contact. Made a mess of his bootlid (pushed it forward
into the bodyshell below the rear screen) and back panel, and the
bracketry took out his bumper. Written off.

The assessors didn't believe it until they had minutely inspected my
car and found there was no damage to the front end at all - but as
there was no contact, I didn't find that surprising - after all, I was
only doing about 10mph when I hit him. I had modified the bracketry to
a less aggresive format by then, mind, in light of the furore.

 

Having run the odd mobile solar system in the past, there is a
perceptible stagger when going from dip beam to realising full
illumination potential. In the days of the Alf-twincammed Escort, the
additional kilowatt of lighting caused such drag on the alternators (I
had a friend who was the absolute bollocks with car wiring (when he was
sober (which wasn't very often))) and he sorted me a second alternator
running on the other side, a split-charge system for the second battery
for the 24V start and a bank of relays for all the above set into the
dash with the jolly wonderful fusebox of his own design.

With all the switches down, flicking the stalk for main beam induced a
bang as all the relays went over together and the engine would stop if
running at less than 2000 rpm. This effect could still be felt when
doing something like crossing a junction, when I'd hit the lighting
master switch for a second to check there wasn't anything crossing our
path and then turn them back on again. Even charging along in second
gear at ~50mph and 5000 rpm, the motor would falter as the world went
white again.

VBG. In a vicariously smug sort of way.

 

I used to have 2 pairs of super oscars on my BX; 2 driving, 2 spot.
Still got 'em. Should ebay them really.

Remarkably good for shifting folk that were hogging the middle lane.

 

Heh. Suntan on the back of the neck, Sir?