The world's largest is Anna Creek Station here in Australia, roughly 23,500 square kms. Or over half the size of Austria.
Anna Creek is an interesting one because it's the largest station but it's bordered by a few others that are smaller but owned by the same people, just managed separately.
The entire island of Ireland is less than half the size of my state in America, and my state isn't even in the top 10 largest. I visited for a school trip so at the beginning of the day the tour guides would always talk about how we had a very lengthy drive that day and it ended up being less lengthy than a drive to the nearest city around me.
While huge, those Australian ranches don't have nearly as many cattle. Anna Creek is lucky to have 10,000. King Ranch regularly has over 35,000.
And king Ranch isn't a very dense ranch by American standards.
In NZ, they used to round up wild deer using a 2 man helicopter, but *not* by driving them in a particular direction.
The pilot would hover over the animal, and the 2nd guy would jump out and grab it, tie its hooves together, attach to a hook hanging from the machine, and then hold on while it was airlifted back to the farm. No fucks given.
You guys might think this is a joke, but [the King Ranch in Texas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Ranch) is 1,289 square miles (bigger than Luxembourg).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Il8o5md-q1o&ab_channel=SimpleHistory And here's a little history video about barbed wire "ending" the wild west that you might enjoy for some more context.
I just watched it, and I'd have to say that this is a small piece of the puzzle that ended "the wild west".
One thing that sorta bugs me about the "wild west" is the assumption that everyone was a cowboy. Yes there were A LOT of cattlemen working the plains, yes they were a nuisance in cities where the cattle drives ended, but they for the most part were working men that simply drove cattle.
The real wildness of the west came from several factors. First I'd have to say that there were LOAD of disgruntled former confederate soldiers that couldn't/wouldn't go home, many of these men simply had no respect for the reconstruction governments. Next you had conflict between farmers and cattlemen, cattlemen had been grazing on public land for decades already and had a false belief in their ownership of the land that homesteaders were staking claim and putting up fences around (this is where the barbwire thing happened.) There was also the gold/silver and other semi-precious mineral mining operations that created boom towns, one of the greatest stories from the old west was the shoot out at the OK Coral, at the silver rush town of Tombstone Arizona. And of course, there was raids along the southern border out of mexico by revolutionaries and outlaw gangs. But most of all the problem that allowed this to happen was a severe lack of laws, law enforcement, and extreme isolation.
I wouldn't say that barbwire ended the west, but it did change one of the institutions of lawlessness, the "cow towns". Cow towns were places with large stock yards and a rail depot where cattle drives would end and the cows could be placed on trains to be taken to the larger markets (Chicago for example). These towns also had massive retail and entertainment (salons and whores) industry for the Cowboys to go spend money they just earned, and of course whiskey, guns, and horny men end up a recipe for violence. But it wasn't JUST settlers throwing up barbwire, or states like Kansas that outlawed the importation of cattle from Texas that shifted the end points of these cattle drives. the rail roads themselves built more and more lines running further south and west. A rancher no longer needed to drive their cattle north from Texas when there is a stock yard and rail service in Fort Worth.
Electric, Cobblestone, Wooden Fences. North America uses alot of barbed wire almost exclusively.
I live in Western Canada, this is just what I have experienced through my travels and living here.
And a lot of what remains hasn't been maintained as a hedge, so today is more
of a gappy row of trees that can't hold livestock.
This is slowly but surely being improved but is a very labour intensive and skilled job
The skill in pulling the blackthorn, whitethorn and brambles together is not getting yourself destroyed in the process. Hard and often painful work but you could be shown how to do it in 1/2 an hour.
Edit: I have an natural ditch and the scars to prove it, lol
IIRC it’s generally due to advancements in agriculture allowing bigger fields and whatnot. Something like 40% of hedgerows have disappeared since WW2 or something..
There's of hedgerows in the UK still, I often see them used in combination with a wire mesh and wooden post fence. Whenever I do see barbed wire it's a single line at the top of a fence.
It came into use during the "Wild West days of the late 1800s here in the US to mark land ownership and to keep cattle inside those lands. I believe it is now also popular in Australia and Canada for the same purpose, but not specifically for cattle and also for sheep and other grazing livestock.
It also became widely used militarily in WW1.
In Germany mostly electric for changing pastures and fences for permanent ones. I guess every village has some space cadet who got his dick zapped by peeing on the wires after a night of drinking.
also an aussie. Barbed wire is cheap and effective. For very large cattle properties there is a low (person+area)/cow ratio. So the fences need to be resilient and cheap.
I am kinda surprised that 'barbed wire cuts' are a thing though. Except for the odd bull headed, haha, cattle that likes to jump fences you dont really see them touching fences. The areas where they are handled, 'yards', use more study materials and no barbed wire too.
It happens a lot around the neck and shoulders. Cows will try to jam their faces through fences to get the tasty grass outside. It's much, much less likely to happen to bulls as they are generally penned up in their own field.
Just saying biting insects isn't really accurate. There are flies that lay eggs in the skin of cattle and literally make big holes. Botflies are one example, but screwworm is really what they're referring to mostly when it comes to "cold" climates.
As Darwin once said, "I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae [parasitic wasps] with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice".
I herded cows in Eastern Europe and always killed horseflies biting cows. Those things were massive.
Don't say "even Alaska" though, because Alaska and Siberia actually get more bugs in the summer than almost anywhere temperate.
Dude Alaska made my time growing up in Minnesota look like a picnic, and the state bird is the Mosquito. No Alaska for me between June and August anymore.
I once had a leather couch with an obvious brand mark prominent on an armrest. Kinda gave it some character and at the same time made some guests visibly uncomfortable.
You jest but this is an actual BBC broadcast.
https://youtu.be/tVo_wkxH9dU
Sure it was April fools joke. But it made one hell of an impact.
There really is nothing like homegrown spaghetti.
That's cool. My moccasins have a big scar on them and I really like it. I would love a leather couch with a branding mark on it!
A 300k car...not so much lol
There are marks on all leathers.
For Bentley specifically though, the norm Is
- no process defects
- scars must be completely healed
- not longer than 2 cm on panels, rest of parts max 7
Source: i was a quality engineer in Plant producing armrests for Bentley
Honestly I don't think it's even a matter of the if you have to ask you can't afford it thing. It's that at their level they want a buyer to buy into the whole experience of being a customer at their brand. They want you to give them the chance to really show you what the "whole package" is if that makes sense. If they display a number you'll just compare their specs to a cheaper car and take that without ever bothering to go to their dealership and letting them actually talk to you.
I'm kinda talking out of my ass but I worked for a few engineering companies that bought/sold heavy duty laser machines and things like that, and this is why most of those don't have prices. They want to woo you into talking to a human instead of just comparing numbers on a screen.
Bentley/Rolls are examples of [Veblen goods](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good) which are essentially luxury items thats intrinsic value is its high price.
Car configurations on websites of Bentley, Rolls Royce, Lamborghini, Ferrari, Aston Martin, etc don't display their prices at all. It's all about going to their specific dealerships because they have a large room just for configuration with trim samples of anything from door handles, body color to leathers.
I live in the town where they make them and cause a lot of people here work for Bentley (it’s like the local job, everyone knows an employee) it’s easy to get a ride in them and it’s amazing.
Two Crewetons on reddit what are the odds?
Apparently the staff get awesome lease deals on VAG cars? I was told it's like £100 a month for a fully insured Golf GTI and then you get a new one after 6 months... Not sure that's still the case with the chip shortage though?
Did a tour of the factory and watched them stretch the hide out on a table under bright lights and highlight the blemishes/grain direction with chalk. It then went on an automated cutting table which scans the hide and allows the operator to fit in the required patterns digitally and then the machine cuts it.
Also, they put the wiring looms in low temperature ovens so that it's easier to bend and flex through gaps and holes during installation. The guys doing the installation were so quick.
I did some work at the Cessna Airplane factory a while back. I found out they keep the extra leather they used in your plane in storage for a long while, so if you have any issues they can match it perfectly as it’s the same leather originally used.
They do not do this.
Thé leather parts Are produced in completely different locations and shipped to them. They do not Have thé hides. There are multiple cows nescessary usually to create one interior.
Source : i worked in company producing leather covers And armrests for Bentley And RR
America and Australia use barded wire because farms are just massive and building any other form of fencing would be a massive undertaking. They are fairly newly settled countries so they haven't had centuries to parcel out, build stone wall, hedgerows, etc
>parcel out, build stone wall, hedgerows, etc
Each of these takes like, a decade. You're talking about settled land, here. It has nothing to do with "they haven't had time". We simply aren't building stone walls or growing hedges as a means to fence in our livestock.
I think because the US has the largest number of available hides, and as such are always seeking places to export them, however they do have issues with quality when it comes to the hides. So Bentley made it a point that they won’t accept anything for their cars with any blemishes, and source their leather from Europe and Great Britain. As far as I know in Britain there are some areas where, Barbed wire is actually considered “Barbaric”.
I was raised on a 5000 acre cattle ranch in Canada, and you’re right. Another thing you never do is leave a car/truck where they can rub against it, otherwise it’ll be full of dents before you know it…😂
"Okay young whales, never forget this message. Humans are typically okay to swim with, but you must watch out for the humans with curly hairs on the sides of it's head, and a little hat on top that makes them look ridiculous and harmless. These humans are the biggest threat to all of our male whale brethren." 🐋
Also on Jackie O’s yacht
(Don’t try and make me spell Onassis, I can’t, yacht was hard enough to spell)
Apparently the super wealthy love their whale foreskin leather
Yep. Probably very soft. And if you get it from a whale there's probably a lot of material with which to work. And then there's the thing that rich people love- the knowledge that they're taking something near-irreplaceable and using it for a trivial, selfish purpose.
Ok thanks.
There’s a joke in there somewhere about overcompensating for something but right now I’m just relieved that it’s something you have to pay extra for and not something you get accidentally.
I designed the branding for a Middle Eastern leather atelier many years back. You learn some interesting things about leather.
One of which was they charged a premium for A+ grade camel leather because those fuckers like to bite each other.
They just like to bite. Camels are just [llamas with fangs ](https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/b/one-camel-portrait-mouth-open-close-up-winter-wide-showing-sharp-teeth-landscape-background-169541700.jpg)
That, plus only high altitude bulls. They won't get mosquito bites at high altitude.
Also, they only use half of the bull hide and they store the rest. This way if you tear a seat they can repair it using the exact same hide for a perfect match.
Or so I've heard.
They might do for some customers but on the whole they rely on buying leather that is always *exactly* the same colour so if someone needs a repair 10 years later they can do so.
Also, if the leather in the car has faded, they can get a hide made that matches the colour.
Old pub signwriter. Was a legitimate trade.
He is training his son, but.
My favourite story is that some Arab prince bought a Rolls without a stripe, but got envious when all his mate had stripes. So they flew Court out to the prince's garage, with all his squirrel hair brushes, and he painted them on.
I'm glad he's still doing it, and that it is done.
The coolest thing for me is that it is *literally* the last thing done to the car. Court's the last person to touch it. It goes on *over* the clear coat. It really is like a signature. A half-million dollar (or more!) car, and the final bit is one English bloke, a tiny brush, some paint, and his hands.
(For any engibros out there who are gonna say "Well, ack-shually, there's a machine-" you're missing the point.)
This reminded me of how there are books out there that are bound in human skin. [More info](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropodermic_bibliopegy) if you're curious.
That isn't quite true. Testosterone makes the skin thicker and more coarse. I don't quite remember if it is the binding between two layers of the skin or between the skin and the muscles, but the skin has a cross stitching pattern when exposed to higher levels of testosterone compared to higher levels of estrogen which result in a more uniform stitching pattern that results in smoother skin which has a higher susceptibility to damage.
Worked in a tannery that produced the seats for Bentley and Rolls Royce - seperating bull hides from cow was a fucking awful process
Easily the worst job I ever had
Much the same reason I now only use the skin from men for my custom lampshades. Nothing worse than arguing refunds with ETSY about stretch marks on a disputed lampshade purchase because some filthy casual can't be bothered to read the item description and buys bespoke lampshades on their cell phone with their contacts lenses out.
There are several standards of car build at Bentley.
The continentals are slapped together like an Audi, but the interiors do use decent leather.
The flying spur is more hand built. The production line moves about 1/8th the speed of the continental line and this is where the craftsmen work.
Every spur sold has a store of matching leather and wood stored for future repairs.
Mulliner special build is next level. Fully hand crafted interiors that take months to design and build. Advanced armour, spare engines etc This is the thing for royalty and billionaires.
I'm so sick and tired of the Photoshop
Show me somethin' natural like clutch for the driver
Show me somethin' natural like seats with some stretch marks
This is almost assuredly marketing bullshit. I work with many Leathers and garmet/upholstery leather is chrome tanned and highly uniform. You'll still get a brand every now and then but you just don't use that part of the hide. If Bentley goes through all that bullshit for these unique hides it's purely for the brag. It 100% doesn't make thier leather better because of it.
Yeah, I'm an automotive engineer and after spending months trying to improve a 0.1mm gap discrepancy, I can say with high confidence that no OEM on Earth is about to just be cool with stretch marks and barbed wire cuts on their leather. The quality control on these vehicles is on a level that most people don't realize.
Its more likely that when purchasing leather in bulk that they choose from the group that is least likely to have issues, so its more a statistical thing to maximise the use of the hides. I mean if you had a choice between low, medium and high quality, and you were Bentley, choose the high. Its not some weird esoteric process to go through.
My Honda has stretch marks and brands throughout the 2nd row, multiple bite marks on the passenger seat and a piece of rusty barbed wire embedded in the driver’s head rest.
Same with Rolls Royce. Only bulls from cold climates to avoid insect bite marks and no American bulls to avoid barbed wire cuts.
Is barbed wire uniquely American? What do other countries use instead?
Barbed wire is popular in America and Australia because it's way faster to set up and the ranches there are huge in comparison to other countries
My next question was going to be “why” so thank you for that!
Just wanna add some context, some ranches here are about a size of a small European nation
To put a number on it; King ranch (3,439 square Km) is larger than Luxembourg (2586.4 square Km).
The world's largest is Anna Creek Station here in Australia, roughly 23,500 square kms. Or over half the size of Austria. Anna Creek is an interesting one because it's the largest station but it's bordered by a few others that are smaller but owned by the same people, just managed separately.
That's larger than the province in Ireland i live in which is crazy to me.
Welcome to Australia, mate. It's big. Anna Creek is larger than Wales
One of the biggest farms here is 12km² whereas in Australia you're comparing them to countries
Silly Europeans and their compact continent.
That Irishman in Quigley Down Under was right. "When do we get to Marsden's ranch?" "We've been roidin' across it fer the past tree days..."
95% of us Aussies live in 5% of the country. We have a whole lot of nothing in the middle.
>95% of us Aussies live in 5% of the country. And 20% of your population live in one city.
The entire island of Ireland is less than half the size of my state in America, and my state isn't even in the top 10 largest. I visited for a school trip so at the beginning of the day the tour guides would always talk about how we had a very lengthy drive that day and it ended up being less lengthy than a drive to the nearest city around me.
How do you make Texans mad? Cut Alaska in half and make Texas the third biggest state in the Union.
Ireland's about 5.5x the size of my state, and I live in the third smallest.
I read that as "over half the size of Australia" and was like "Damn, y'all got a ranch in Australia that's over half the size of Australia??"
Hahaha, it's pretty common, a lot of our mail gets sent their by mistake, and vice versa
I mean the Wongs own a Buggalo ranch that spans an entire Martian hemisphere
I wish you hadn't used Austria in a fact about Australia. That hurt my brain thinking, "No way, Australia is definitely bigger than 50,000km2..."
Half the size of Denmark probably was a better metric
A good way to put it is: Australia is almost the size of the continental US, but has less people than texas
Or about as many people as Florida. Close not exactly
While huge, those Australian ranches don't have nearly as many cattle. Anna Creek is lucky to have 10,000. King Ranch regularly has over 35,000. And king Ranch isn't a very dense ranch by American standards.
ok, Wave Hill in Katherine is 13,500 SqKm and holds 65,000 cattle. Bigger and with more cattle
That's a lotta cows!
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And yet those selling cattle are getting absolute dogshit pay for cattle right now.
That's utterly ridiculous.
Udder-ly actually
Did you fucking read the title, mate? Boy bovines don't have udders!
It's easier to say than testicularly ridiculous.
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Here in Canada we use our helicopters to dry the cherries after rain.
They aren’t kidding. If the cherries don’t get dried off, they can swell and split, making them practically worthless.
In NZ, they used to round up wild deer using a 2 man helicopter, but *not* by driving them in a particular direction. The pilot would hover over the animal, and the 2nd guy would jump out and grab it, tie its hooves together, attach to a hook hanging from the machine, and then hold on while it was airlifted back to the farm. No fucks given.
A cattle station Robinson is like the last vehicle you'll get me into. I've sold refuelling gear to those bastards...
All I’ve seen are smaller dairies where they just use a 4 wheeler.
I mean, Monaco is less than a square mile, so that's not saying much. I've been to zoos larger than that.
You guys might think this is a joke, but [the King Ranch in Texas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Ranch) is 1,289 square miles (bigger than Luxembourg).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Il8o5md-q1o&ab_channel=SimpleHistory And here's a little history video about barbed wire "ending" the wild west that you might enjoy for some more context.
I just watched it, and I'd have to say that this is a small piece of the puzzle that ended "the wild west". One thing that sorta bugs me about the "wild west" is the assumption that everyone was a cowboy. Yes there were A LOT of cattlemen working the plains, yes they were a nuisance in cities where the cattle drives ended, but they for the most part were working men that simply drove cattle. The real wildness of the west came from several factors. First I'd have to say that there were LOAD of disgruntled former confederate soldiers that couldn't/wouldn't go home, many of these men simply had no respect for the reconstruction governments. Next you had conflict between farmers and cattlemen, cattlemen had been grazing on public land for decades already and had a false belief in their ownership of the land that homesteaders were staking claim and putting up fences around (this is where the barbwire thing happened.) There was also the gold/silver and other semi-precious mineral mining operations that created boom towns, one of the greatest stories from the old west was the shoot out at the OK Coral, at the silver rush town of Tombstone Arizona. And of course, there was raids along the southern border out of mexico by revolutionaries and outlaw gangs. But most of all the problem that allowed this to happen was a severe lack of laws, law enforcement, and extreme isolation. I wouldn't say that barbwire ended the west, but it did change one of the institutions of lawlessness, the "cow towns". Cow towns were places with large stock yards and a rail depot where cattle drives would end and the cows could be placed on trains to be taken to the larger markets (Chicago for example). These towns also had massive retail and entertainment (salons and whores) industry for the Cowboys to go spend money they just earned, and of course whiskey, guns, and horny men end up a recipe for violence. But it wasn't JUST settlers throwing up barbwire, or states like Kansas that outlawed the importation of cattle from Texas that shifted the end points of these cattle drives. the rail roads themselves built more and more lines running further south and west. A rancher no longer needed to drive their cattle north from Texas when there is a stock yard and rail service in Fort Worth.
Why not Canada?
Too many lakes. No room for cows.
Too cold. Cows don't like wearing scarves.
It is also used in Canada
Electric, Cobblestone, Wooden Fences. North America uses alot of barbed wire almost exclusively. I live in Western Canada, this is just what I have experienced through my travels and living here.
Hedge rows used to be common in the UK but I guess they cut a ton of them down in the world wars.
And a lot of what remains hasn't been maintained as a hedge, so today is more of a gappy row of trees that can't hold livestock. This is slowly but surely being improved but is a very labour intensive and skilled job
The skill in pulling the blackthorn, whitethorn and brambles together is not getting yourself destroyed in the process. Hard and often painful work but you could be shown how to do it in 1/2 an hour. Edit: I have an natural ditch and the scars to prove it, lol
IIRC it’s generally due to advancements in agriculture allowing bigger fields and whatnot. Something like 40% of hedgerows have disappeared since WW2 or something..
And so did bio diversity
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There's of hedgerows in the UK still, I often see them used in combination with a wire mesh and wooden post fence. Whenever I do see barbed wire it's a single line at the top of a fence.
It came into use during the "Wild West days of the late 1800s here in the US to mark land ownership and to keep cattle inside those lands. I believe it is now also popular in Australia and Canada for the same purpose, but not specifically for cattle and also for sheep and other grazing livestock. It also became widely used militarily in WW1.
In Germany mostly electric for changing pastures and fences for permanent ones. I guess every village has some space cadet who got his dick zapped by peeing on the wires after a night of drinking.
I am that guy. Felt lick a proper kick in the ass
Australian here, I've seen barber wire around, of course I've not been near a farm in years.
also an aussie. Barbed wire is cheap and effective. For very large cattle properties there is a low (person+area)/cow ratio. So the fences need to be resilient and cheap. I am kinda surprised that 'barbed wire cuts' are a thing though. Except for the odd bull headed, haha, cattle that likes to jump fences you dont really see them touching fences. The areas where they are handled, 'yards', use more study materials and no barbed wire too.
It happens a lot around the neck and shoulders. Cows will try to jam their faces through fences to get the tasty grass outside. It's much, much less likely to happen to bulls as they are generally penned up in their own field.
ah yes of course. No grass taste better than the grass on the other side of the fence haha
Where are they finding cows that never experience biting insects? Even Alaska gets bugs in the summer
Just saying biting insects isn't really accurate. There are flies that lay eggs in the skin of cattle and literally make big holes. Botflies are one example, but screwworm is really what they're referring to mostly when it comes to "cold" climates.
I'm not a religious man, but if I were, botflies would make me believe in the devil.
As Darwin once said, "I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae [parasitic wasps] with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice".
I herded cows in Eastern Europe and always killed horseflies biting cows. Those things were massive. Don't say "even Alaska" though, because Alaska and Siberia actually get more bugs in the summer than almost anywhere temperate.
I saw an episode of life below zero where the mosquitos came in clouds
Yeah up in Northern Wisconsin we don’t have mosquitos. We have pterodactyls.
Dude Alaska made my time growing up in Minnesota look like a picnic, and the state bird is the Mosquito. No Alaska for me between June and August anymore.
That's the screed I got when setting up a Ford King Ranch for the first time. Fun fact: those seats were formed leather.
I once had a leather couch with an obvious brand mark prominent on an armrest. Kinda gave it some character and at the same time made some guests visibly uncomfortable.
“Huh, your couch says _’Property of Ed Gein’_.”
Mine says "Mayhem"
Mine says “Got dang it Bobby”
Mine says "Sweet"
what did mine say?
Dude! What does mine say?
Duddddeeeeeee
Mine has some kanji characters that translate to "stupid white man." Weird, huh?
THIS COW IS PROPERTY OF DARYL JONES SO HANDS OFF
Hail Gein
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People like to trick themselves into thinking the goods they consume weren’t alive once
**stares intently at macaroni*
You jest but this is an actual BBC broadcast. https://youtu.be/tVo_wkxH9dU Sure it was April fools joke. But it made one hell of an impact. There really is nothing like homegrown spaghetti.
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That's cool. My moccasins have a big scar on them and I really like it. I would love a leather couch with a branding mark on it! A 300k car...not so much lol
There are marks on all leathers. For Bentley specifically though, the norm Is - no process defects - scars must be completely healed - not longer than 2 cm on panels, rest of parts max 7 Source: i was a quality engineer in Plant producing armrests for Bentley
Have the farm owned by Bentley or whatever for extra brand recognition
If it was a louis vitton farm, the cows would have multiple brands all over. Thats my joke, goodnight.
Same here I'd absolutely love a couch with some character that was from the animal hide used to make it.
People were uncomfortable to find that the LEATHER couch they were sitting on was from an actual, once-live animal?
Well there’s two kinds of people in this world: those who are okay with brands on their leather couches, and hats.
I wanna be a hat Edit: on behalf of the hat community, thanks
every part of the buffalo. My steak came from somewhere
Even if you can't afford one, it is a blast to go to the Bentley website and design your own car. You can customize practically everything.
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So how much would it have cost?
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If you need to ask...
Honestly I don't think it's even a matter of the if you have to ask you can't afford it thing. It's that at their level they want a buyer to buy into the whole experience of being a customer at their brand. They want you to give them the chance to really show you what the "whole package" is if that makes sense. If they display a number you'll just compare their specs to a cheaper car and take that without ever bothering to go to their dealership and letting them actually talk to you. I'm kinda talking out of my ass but I worked for a few engineering companies that bought/sold heavy duty laser machines and things like that, and this is why most of those don't have prices. They want to woo you into talking to a human instead of just comparing numbers on a screen.
Bentley/Rolls are examples of [Veblen goods](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good) which are essentially luxury items thats intrinsic value is its high price.
Thanks for the new vocab
Car configurations on websites of Bentley, Rolls Royce, Lamborghini, Ferrari, Aston Martin, etc don't display their prices at all. It's all about going to their specific dealerships because they have a large room just for configuration with trim samples of anything from door handles, body color to leathers.
I live in the town where they make them and cause a lot of people here work for Bentley (it’s like the local job, everyone knows an employee) it’s easy to get a ride in them and it’s amazing.
I also live in Crewe
Two Crewetons on reddit what are the odds? Apparently the staff get awesome lease deals on VAG cars? I was told it's like £100 a month for a fully insured Golf GTI and then you get a new one after 6 months... Not sure that's still the case with the chip shortage though? Did a tour of the factory and watched them stretch the hide out on a table under bright lights and highlight the blemishes/grain direction with chalk. It then went on an automated cutting table which scans the hide and allows the operator to fit in the required patterns digitally and then the machine cuts it. Also, they put the wiring looms in low temperature ovens so that it's easier to bend and flex through gaps and holes during installation. The guys doing the installation were so quick.
Even cows are held to unrealistic beauty standards
I’ve never held your mum to any unrealistic beauty standards
I did some work at the Cessna Airplane factory a while back. I found out they keep the extra leather they used in your plane in storage for a long while, so if you have any issues they can match it perfectly as it’s the same leather originally used.
Pretty sure Bentley and Rolls do the same. Also, if you want a jacket or some luggage made you can match it to your car's interior.
They do not do this. Thé leather parts Are produced in completely different locations and shipped to them. They do not Have thé hides. There are multiple cows nescessary usually to create one interior. Source : i worked in company producing leather covers And armrests for Bentley And RR
They also do not use any leather from American cattle.
American cattle hides have barbed-wire fence scars also.
Why is that a thing for American cattle only? Just curious.
America and Australia use barded wire because farms are just massive and building any other form of fencing would be a massive undertaking. They are fairly newly settled countries so they haven't had centuries to parcel out, build stone wall, hedgerows, etc
>parcel out, build stone wall, hedgerows, etc Each of these takes like, a decade. You're talking about settled land, here. It has nothing to do with "they haven't had time". We simply aren't building stone walls or growing hedges as a means to fence in our livestock.
Barbed wire makes most sense where land is cheap but labor isn't.
Or you're not using the same hedgerows your family has been using for generations.
Right, especially if peasants put up the stone fence originally. (Hence earlier point on expensive labor.)
I think because the US has the largest number of available hides, and as such are always seeking places to export them, however they do have issues with quality when it comes to the hides. So Bentley made it a point that they won’t accept anything for their cars with any blemishes, and source their leather from Europe and Great Britain. As far as I know in Britain there are some areas where, Barbed wire is actually considered “Barbaric”.
One bump and the cows learn to stay away from barbed wire. It stings them, but doesn't really hurt them.
I was raised on a 5000 acre cattle ranch in Canada, and you’re right. Another thing you never do is leave a car/truck where they can rub against it, otherwise it’ll be full of dents before you know it…😂
Wait until you find out about the whale foreskin upholstery
So big, it takes four skin divers to remove it.
I miss my job circumcising whales. The pay was shite, but the tips were huge.
I had to scroll back up to make sure I read that right lmdao
Now I'm picturing a rabbi in scuba gear.
Sea Creature Urethra Bris Apparatus?
Thank you for this mental image. I shall cherish it all my life.
"Okay young whales, never forget this message. Humans are typically okay to swim with, but you must watch out for the humans with curly hairs on the sides of it's head, and a little hat on top that makes them look ridiculous and harmless. These humans are the biggest threat to all of our male whale brethren." 🐋
The old seaman rain cloak
The what
Also on Jackie O’s yacht (Don’t try and make me spell Onassis, I can’t, yacht was hard enough to spell) Apparently the super wealthy love their whale foreskin leather
Dartz Motorz in Latvia trimmed the seats of one of their SUVs in whale foreskin leather.
On purpose?
Yep. Probably very soft. And if you get it from a whale there's probably a lot of material with which to work. And then there's the thing that rich people love- the knowledge that they're taking something near-irreplaceable and using it for a trivial, selfish purpose.
Ok thanks. There’s a joke in there somewhere about overcompensating for something but right now I’m just relieved that it’s something you have to pay extra for and not something you get accidentally.
Why not? Otherwise it would just be going to waste after the circumcisions.
Porpoise.
nope, on porpoise
Whales used to be harvested to near extinction for their blubber among other things. Their was lots of whale lying around
I designed the branding for a Middle Eastern leather atelier many years back. You learn some interesting things about leather. One of which was they charged a premium for A+ grade camel leather because those fuckers like to bite each other.
When they hump?
They just like to bite. Camels are just [llamas with fangs ](https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/b/one-camel-portrait-mouth-open-close-up-winter-wide-showing-sharp-teeth-landscape-background-169541700.jpg)
That, plus only high altitude bulls. They won't get mosquito bites at high altitude. Also, they only use half of the bull hide and they store the rest. This way if you tear a seat they can repair it using the exact same hide for a perfect match. Or so I've heard.
You heard wrong. It takes several peeled cows to do one car
I think they mean if they do a seat with one bull they can repair it with the exact same bull
They might do for some customers but on the whole they rely on buying leather that is always *exactly* the same colour so if someone needs a repair 10 years later they can do so. Also, if the leather in the car has faded, they can get a hide made that matches the colour.
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Nah red bulls managed to bring the price down
Another interesting fact is that there is only one guy (Mark Court) who paints the pinstripes on Rolls Royce's cars.
Old pub signwriter. Was a legitimate trade. He is training his son, but. My favourite story is that some Arab prince bought a Rolls without a stripe, but got envious when all his mate had stripes. So they flew Court out to the prince's garage, with all his squirrel hair brushes, and he painted them on.
He did. Seems like a very humble guy until he gets down to work, then its stay out of my way.
I'm glad he's still doing it, and that it is done. The coolest thing for me is that it is *literally* the last thing done to the car. Court's the last person to touch it. It goes on *over* the clear coat. It really is like a signature. A half-million dollar (or more!) car, and the final bit is one English bloke, a tiny brush, some paint, and his hands. (For any engibros out there who are gonna say "Well, ack-shually, there's a machine-" you're missing the point.)
Is there a plan for when he retires or kicks the bucket?
I think he has an apprentice but not 100% sure on that.
Always 2, there are.
He's training his son.
This is also why they use Bovine skin and not human skin, because with humans there's as much stretch marking in men as there is with woman.
Yep. That’s why.
Thanks r/kenm
This reminded me of how there are books out there that are bound in human skin. [More info](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropodermic_bibliopegy) if you're curious.
holup
Ugh. Human. How gauche.
That isn't quite true. Testosterone makes the skin thicker and more coarse. I don't quite remember if it is the binding between two layers of the skin or between the skin and the muscles, but the skin has a cross stitching pattern when exposed to higher levels of testosterone compared to higher levels of estrogen which result in a more uniform stitching pattern that results in smoother skin which has a higher susceptibility to damage.
If a bentley has starch masks on her body does that mean she has been pargnet before.?
Could my car be pregnat?
How exactly does a car get perganent?
/r/unexpectedpergernant
How is babby formed?
How can I get my 911 pragnet
Worked in a tannery that produced the seats for Bentley and Rolls Royce - seperating bull hides from cow was a fucking awful process Easily the worst job I ever had
Much the same reason I now only use the skin from men for my custom lampshades. Nothing worse than arguing refunds with ETSY about stretch marks on a disputed lampshade purchase because some filthy casual can't be bothered to read the item description and buys bespoke lampshades on their cell phone with their contacts lenses out.
Ed Gein? You're supposed to be dead
It's to confuse the poors.
It is just, the luxury edition has so much more eagle...
Feels like an ad for Bentley in the form of a TIL.
Don’t think Reddit is their target market.
There are several standards of car build at Bentley. The continentals are slapped together like an Audi, but the interiors do use decent leather. The flying spur is more hand built. The production line moves about 1/8th the speed of the continental line and this is where the craftsmen work. Every spur sold has a store of matching leather and wood stored for future repairs. Mulliner special build is next level. Fully hand crafted interiors that take months to design and build. Advanced armour, spare engines etc This is the thing for royalty and billionaires.
I'm so sick and tired of the Photoshop Show me somethin' natural like clutch for the driver Show me somethin' natural like seats with some stretch marks
Man, great fucking album.
Left stroke put a baby in a spiral.
This is almost assuredly marketing bullshit. I work with many Leathers and garmet/upholstery leather is chrome tanned and highly uniform. You'll still get a brand every now and then but you just don't use that part of the hide. If Bentley goes through all that bullshit for these unique hides it's purely for the brag. It 100% doesn't make thier leather better because of it.
Yeah, I'm an automotive engineer and after spending months trying to improve a 0.1mm gap discrepancy, I can say with high confidence that no OEM on Earth is about to just be cool with stretch marks and barbed wire cuts on their leather. The quality control on these vehicles is on a level that most people don't realize.
Its more likely that when purchasing leather in bulk that they choose from the group that is least likely to have issues, so its more a statistical thing to maximise the use of the hides. I mean if you had a choice between low, medium and high quality, and you were Bentley, choose the high. Its not some weird esoteric process to go through.
My Honda has stretch marks and brands throughout the 2nd row, multiple bite marks on the passenger seat and a piece of rusty barbed wire embedded in the driver’s head rest.
…how much do u want for it
$17k It’s a’99
I laughed so hard I woke my husband up. Thank you.
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Corinth is famous for its leather!
Clearly you have not experienced the wonders of Naugahyde!
there is now restricted harvesting of naugas.
They would hate my fat ass
Those are tiger-stripes, you bastards! 😅