Thailand’s distinctive longtail boats, which are made by mounting diesel truck engines on the backs of large canoes, are the result of a historical quirk in the way that Britain regulated motor vehicles.
I posted a link to James Gosling’s photos and description of longtails a couple days ago, and Alexander wrote in with this fascinating tale of their origin:
It’s not well known that
those boats originate from a change in the British government’s motor
vehicle Construction and Use Regulations in the late 1960s. What with the
new motorway construction programme well under way, the (largely old) truck
fleet had begun to get in the way. So the then Ministry of Transport
introduced a minimum power-to-weight ratio.This meant that a ton of trucks with Gardner LX 105hp (mostly) or Perkins P4
engines suddenly became obsolete. Exporting second-hand trucks to places
that would accept them (essentially, the third world) was not great
business, so they were either scrapped or retrofitted with more wallop.
Hence a mass of very reliable, very user-serviceable diesel engines going
begging.Some sly fox saw a chance, and went round the country buying the engines and
shipping them to Hong Kong and Singapore for sale to chandlers. As the
engine arrived complete with the reverse box and the end of a propshaft,
they just put in a length of shaft and a prop. Local boat builders came up
with the rest and a new, unmistakable craft was born.They still have (even brand-new ones with much later power units, radar and
GPS) the traditional eyes on each side of the bow, a custom recorded
everywhere from the Mediterranean to Japan and back into pre-classical
antiquity.
(Thanks, Alexander!)