….. Did any other aero manufacturers produce other automotive thingy wotsits

Plenty on the engines side…Rolls-Royce, BMW and Daimler-Benz to name but some.
Not so sure about airframes. I know Austin built a few fighters in the Great war, and Fiat means as much in aviation as it does on the road. Plus, of course, the many British motor makers like Rootes Group who turned themselves into plane makers in the Second World war – think of all those Speke-built Blenheims and Halifaxes.
The early French aviator Gabriel Voisin was as much a car man as a planes man. He was just about the last survivor of the really early days of powered flying (ie pre-1908) and in the 1970s he was asked whether he would rather be driving one of his cars or a modern one. He reply was along the lines of ‘don’t be silly – a Renault 5 is better than anything I ever made.’
I’m sure I’ve left a few obvious names out, but you get the general idea.

William

From the passenger point of view one aluminium tube is much like any other. FWIW I’ve always had a soft spot for DC-9s (to say nothing of MD82s et seq) but that may be nothing more than the fact that somehow I seem to have ended up in four-abreast club class more often.
Can’t speak for Caravelles, but I’ve done Comets (same fuselage cross section) and the only thing that sticks in the mind is that they were quite cosy, but noisy blighters if your seat was aft of the exhausts – a remark that doesn’t apply to the Caravelle, obviously.
Not rear-engined, I know, but Air Inter’s Mercures felt like they were an extension of the Paris Metro…airbus in its original meaning perchance? (although I have heard a similar remark about the 1960s BEA being nothing more than a division of London Transport.)
At the risk of drifting off-thread, I found the word ‘airbus’ in John Wyndham’s sci-fi book The Day of the Triffids the other day. The book dates from the early 1950s – was this the first time the word appeared in print?

William

I’d have a look at the free giveaways first.

Try (in no particular order) Photoshop Album Starter Edition:

http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshopalbum/starter.html

or Google’s Picasa:

http://picasa.google.co.uk/intl/en/#utm_source=en-all-more&utm_campaign=en-pic&utm_medium=et

or Irfanview:

http://www.irfanview.com/

There are others, of course, but these are pretty reliable. No so sure about the 3D option, though.

William

Great news…I have memories of how the sound of a Britannia doing ground runs at Liverpool would reverberate round most of the southern half of the city, or so it seemed.

BTW, shall we we get the stealing-the-hubcaps jokes out of the way now, please?:) Besides, I do know a Britannia hasn’t got hubcaps, anyway.:D

William

Story strictly embargoed until April 1

Wasn’t a Gannet at all. Friend of a friend reckons he saw a float-equipped Vulcan at South Georgia just before it hit an albatross and they had to call the mission off. That’s why the back-up Vulcans had to fly such a long way…;)

William

Bruce is absolutely right about the diesel. My favourite for small components is Holts Rustola, which is graphited.

William

There’s a complete one at Cosford, which I suspect is the location of F MK6 JOHN’s photograph.

http://navigator.rafmuseum.org/results.do?view=detail&db=object&pageSize=1&id=18733

William

Amendment: just spotted that Alert Ken had made the same point. Whoops!