RAY: Hi, we're back and you're listening to Car Talk with us, Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers, and we're here to talk about cars, car repair, and the answer to last week's Puzzler. Here it is. You don't remember this at all?
TOM: I don't remember it! A dream you had.
RAY: Well, I'll fill you in. You'll...it'll come back to you, I'm sure. The other day, due to circumstances certainly beyond my control, I was forced to drive home from work in my brother's Fiat. As I drove it home, I began to have an appreciation for the reverence that Tommy has had for his late Dodge Dart, because compared to the Dart, the Fiat is such a hopeless piece of junk.
TOM: I couldn't...you did more complaining when you got to my house...
RAY: And the thing was all...I almost sideswiped 15 or 20 cars. I don't know how many mirrors I knocked off of parked cars. It's all over the road. And then the fumes, the leaking oil, the smell of gasoline--jeez!
TOM: Yeah, the noise.
RAY: Oh, it was brutal. You can't steer it, the radio doesn't work.
TOM: The lights always flash on the dash, you don't know what they mean.
RAY: Oh, I didn't even notice that--I was too scared to notice. Anyway, I finally get home, I go to sleep, and--perhaps due to the gasoline fumes or just the experience itself--I had a very strange dream, and in this dream I saw my brother driving a spiffy little convertible.
TOM: Prophetic, man.
RAY: And the license plate on that convertible said WEIGHT, W-E-I-G-H-T. And I wonder, "What kind of a car would have a license plate that said WEIGHT?" And that's the Puzzler.
TOM: Yes! And how prophetic it is, because I now am the owner...
RAY: Well, not yet.
TOM: Not yet, but I will be within minutes, I hope, the owner of one of these very cars.
RAY: Yes.
TOM: Going to replace the Dart and the Fiat.
RAY: Yes, and the car that Tommy is getting is the formula for weight, because in our system of measurement in this...on this planet of ours, weight is mass times the acceleration of gravity, or MG.
TOM: Augh!
RAY: So if you had a mass of one slug...
TOM: And you know your units, don't you!
RAY: Times the acceleration of gravity, which is 32 feet per second squared, it would weigh 32 pounds.
TOM: Exactly.
RAY: How many slugs is your MG?
TOM: About that! Wow!
RAY: Do we have a winner?
TOM: That's a great Puzzler.
RAY: Well, I don't know about great...
TOM: And a great car!
RAY: We'll see about that.
TOM: Well, we don't know if we have that. We do have a winner; the winner is Carol Strumpek--Strumpek! Hey, Carol, that's a great name, Strumpek, from Chantilly, Virginia. And for having her correct answer chosen from among all of the...
[ Car Talk Puzzler ]
