At 10:23 PM 1/9/97 -0500, you wrote:
>Ah! "the Wave" Years ago, *all* sportscar enthusiasts waved, but there was
a definite
>protocal. I can recall that it was so controversial that protocals were
covered in an
>article in Road & Track. Something about a "Ferrari expects to be waved at
first before
>returning the wave" or some such malarkey. Today, you do that, you might be
shot at. I
>have a neighbor who owns a TR4A, we wave, neither of us has met. We just
love our
>lbc's.
>
>Michael Ohleger
I remember reading a reprint of that article in R&T sometime in the '70s.
As I recall,
it was titled "The Armwagglers Guide", was originally published in the '50s,
and
proposed a protocol for waving. When two sports cars approached, the driver
of the
less-powerful car was to initiate the wave by lifting the left hand from the
wheel
(assuming it was safe to do so) and holding it raised for a moment. The
driver of the
more-powerful car, upon seeing the initiation of the wave, was to return the
wave,
upon which the initiator was to discontinue the wave. Of course, for RHD
cars, the
right hand was to be lifted, not the left. Also, the article discussed the
difficulty of modifications to the vehicles as related to the initiation of the
wave -- something like, "should the driver of a supercharged MG be required to
initiate the wave to an unsupercharged Triumph?" As I recall, the standing
rule was,
unless the modifications were immediately visible to the oncoming driver,
the burden
was on the driver of a vehicle which would ordinarily be expected to
initiate the
armwaggle to do so.
This is really stretching my memory, but if I recall, the article (which was
written
with tongue firmly in cheek) ended with a hierarchy something like this:
MGs waved
to Triumphs, which waved to Austin-Healeys, which waved to Jaguars, which
waved to
Porches, which waved to Ferraris, which only waved to God.
Does somebody out there have a copy of the article? Maybe they could post it?
Happy motoring!
Mark Moburg
markmoburg@mindspring.com
58 MGA, which waves to
57 Jaguar MK VIII, which waves to
85 XJ6 Vanden Plas, which waves to
70 M*rc*d*s-B*nz 300 SEL 6.3
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