RAY: Hi, we're back. 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 duh, the answer to last week's Puzzler. Now, this puzzler came from an email that someone sent us but I --
TOM: You lost it. Mmm-hmm.
RAY: Anyway, some years ago, he says, I was in the service stationed overseas in Europe. And while I was there, I decided it would be fun to buy myself a motorcycle, especially considering that Uncle Sam would probably ship it back home for --
TOM: Yeah, for cheap.
RAY: -- cheap. You sneak it in with your underwear. So, while I was at the motorcycle shop conducting the transaction, this fellow recognizing that I was a serviceman said, "You're going to ship this thing back to the States when your tour of duty is over?" I said, "Yyeah, in fact I am." He says, "Well, there's something you'll have to change before you can drive this thing in America." And I said, "Oh really? Well, can I buy this thing from you?" He says "No, I don't have one, but you'll certainly have no trouble getting one when you get it back home." And the question is: what did I have to change on this bike before it would be legal to drive in America?
TOM: Legal?
RAY: Legal.
TOM: Legal to drive in America.
RAY: Yeah. And the answer is --
TOM: This is either going to be brilliant or bo-o-o-gus.
RAY: Well, I happen to have --
TOM: I have to say, I have been thinking about this.
RAY: Well, that's always dangerous.
TOM: That's dangerous.
RAY: As luck would have it, I read this email ages ago.
TOM: Yeah.
RAY: And a friend of ours, Mark Nichols, has a buddy, Hayden, who's --
TOM: Yeah?
RAY: -- from England and bought his motorcycle there, just like this guy did.
TOM: Yeah. Well, I have already narrowed it down to England.
RAY: He didn't buy it in Germany or France.
TOM: I already, I already knew that.
RAY: He buys his motorcycle in England and --
TOM: And he had to buy a different mirror.
RAY: A, no. You're close.
TOM: Not a different mirror?
RAY: No, and I asked him, "Did you have to change the headlight?" And he says "Yes, in fact, I did because the Brits drive on the left-hand side of the road, and the reflector in the headlight is aimed to the left."
TOM: Oh.
RAY: So that, if you're driving straight down the road, and traffic is coming toward you, and you're driving now straight down the road in America, your headlight --
TOM: It's going to be ??
RAY: -- will be blinding people as they approach you because the reflectors in American headlights aim the beam slightly to the right for right-hand driving.
TOM: Wow. See, well, I didn't know that.
RAY: Well.
TOM: I didn't, and I decided it had to be the mirror and had to be England. But then, I didn't like that answer because there are plenty of motorcycles --
RAY: And you were ready to pounce on me. I can see the bo- just forming on your lips.
TOM: It was. But I, no, this is fine. Even though it may be bogus, you're not sure anyway.
RAY: Do we have a winner?
TOM: Yeah, we do,. The winner is Alan Marks from Decata, Georgia. And for having his answer selected at random from the pile of correct answers that we got, Alan is going to get a $25 gift certificate to the Shameless Commerce Division at the Car Talk Section of cars.com. And with that gift certificate, he can get a copy of our new CD, Car Talk Car Tunes, the Car Talk Compendium of Disrespectful Car Songs. They're not all disrespectful.
RAY: There are actual songs on this CD. Right?
TOM: They're actual songs, yeah. And we discovered this is a great album to have in an emergency, like when Dougie was waiting for that tow truck to pull him out of the creek in his rental car in California. He popped in the CD and played "It's A Rental" which includes the words, "There's something about a rental that feels so appealing, it may be a Hugo, but you go freewheeling." And he drove that baby right into the water.
RAY: Did he send a copy of the CD to the lawyers at Hertz? It was Hertz he rented the car from, wasn't it?
TOM: I think so.
RAY: And what happened? He actually, like, drove into a creek?
TOM: Yeah. He just drove right into --
RAY: But when he returned the car, he didn't tell them.
TOM: He said to his wife just before he did it, "Hey, watch this." But he didn't send a copy to the lawyers. He doesn't think they're quite ready to laugh about the whole thing yet.
RAY: Anyway, we'll have an interesting little Puzzler coming up in the third half of the show. You notice I didn't say new because it isn't --
TOM: Not going to be new.
RAY: -- exactly new.
TOM: That's all right.
RAY: But stick around. You might like it. Right now, if you have a question about your car or anything else, our number if 888-CAR-TALK. That's 18, 88, 22, 78, 255. Hello, you're on Car Talk.
[ Car Talk Puzzler ]
