Porsche story became a Saga
QUESTION Which model of Porsche does Saga Noren drive in the Swedish/Danish TV series The Bridge? The hunter green Porsche is a 1977 911S, a U.S. specification rather than a european model. It has U.S. front side lights, chrome window surrounds and a black grille with silver rear badge.
It emerged only late during filming that hans hedberg, test manager of Swedish car magazine Teknikens Varld, had brought the car to Sweden.
‘I bought the car from a Porsche workshop outside San Francisco in 2009. I suddenly spotted it when passing by. I gave them a price and the next day it was mine. [I liked the fact the car was] original and non-fixed.
‘The 1977 911S has the big 180 hp-engine, but in the small body. In 1978, the wider 911SC came, but the 911S-77 is in my eyes the cool cat. And fast!’
The car arrived in Gothenburg harbour in February 2010, and hedberg sold it to The Bridge production company later that year.
It would have had a price tag of £6,000 new, making it expensive but not unafford- able for motoring enthusiasts. Porsche wasn’t considered such a luxury brand in the Seventies.
Detective Saga Noren’s model has nonstandard Fuchs Forge alloy wheels, which are ultra-light and would make the car more expensive. A collector would expect to pay around £10,000 for a model in good condition.
It’s not the first time a Porsche and a strong female character have appeared on screen together. The girlfriend of Steve McQueen’s Frank Bullitt drives a Porsche 356 Cabriolet in the classic 1968 film, Bullitt.
The Bridge Porsche paid a visit to Britain in February this year when it featured at Nordicana, the festival of Nordic fiction and film at the Old Truman Brewery in Shoreditch, London. Fans were able to have their picture taken with the vehicle.
Several members of The Bridge cast were there and Sofia helin (Saga) talked about the car in a Q&A session. She said she wasn’t fond of her Porsche as the shock absorbers weren’t working well and one of the doors fell off at one point.
Richard Creswell, London N11. QUESTION My grandfather worked in a tobacco factory in Christiana, Norway (which became Oslo in 1924). Can anyone identify what company it might have been? There were three major tobacco companies in Oslo in the early 19th century; Conrad Langaard, h. Petteroe Tobakkfabrikk and J. L. Tiedemanns Tobaksfabrik, which was the oldest and largest. On May 21, 1778, Tiedemanns Tobakk was granted a royal charter to produce and sell tobacco.
Johann Ludwig Tiedemann took over the company in 1833 and Tiedemanns Tobaksfabrik was established. In 1849, he sold the company to Johan h. Andresen.
The Andresen family owned it through five generations until 1998, when the company was merged with Scandinavian Tobacco (ST).
In 2005, the Andresen family divested themselves of ST. In early 2008, production was closed down and moved to Denmark and the company changed its name to Tiedemanns Tobakk AS.
The company was acquired by British American Tobacco in the summer of 2008, and as a result of this the company changed its name to British American Tobacco Norway on January 1, 2009.
In its heyday, Tiedemann was not only the largest tobacco factory in Norway. It was also the largest user, outside the U.S., of Virginia dark- f i red and air- cured tobacco.
Tiedemanns’ historical collection of tobacco products and advertising material is on display at the Norsk Folkemuseum. The 2,500 items include tobacco products from 1870 to 1998.
It is an impressive array of cigarette packages, pack designs and objets d’art, tobacco packages and boxes, adverts, pipe tobacco, cigars, snuff and chewing tobacco as well as ashtrays, pipes and tables furnished for smoking pipes.
Conrad Langaard, founded in 1854, started out producing chewing tobacco, but quickly expanded and began selling snuff and cigars. In 1890, it became the first Norwegian tobacco company to sell cigarettes. Conrad Langaard still exists and produces half a million cigarettes a day.
h. Petteroe Tobakkfabrikk was founded by Oslo businessman halfdan Petteroe in 1900. Within ten years it was the third largest tobacco company in Norway, which became known for its chewing tobacco and Petteroe cigarettes.
Petteroe established himself in quarters around Frydenlund brewery at Bislett, where Langaard and Tiedemann also had factories. h. Petteroe Tobakkfabrikk became part of Tiedemanns in 1972.
anthony tyler, Belfast. QUESTION During World War II, the Bell Company built an aircraft with the engine mounted behind the pilot. Was this a success? Did any other manufacturer imitate the design? Earlier answers omitted some of the key failures of these aircraft experienced by the pilots. It was underpowered — except in a dive. It could not climb fast enough or high enough.
When it had expended most of its ammunition, the centre of gravity would slide back and the plane would tumble, so the tail came over the plane and took up the space normally reserved for the propeller.
The controls were too delicate: abrupt handling gave rise to a high- speed stall and sudden failure to lift on one side. The result was a dangerous snaproll.
It had a sophisticated electrical system, but if it failed, it would lose control of its connection to the propeller blades, which would lose their grip in the air.
When that ‘flattening’ occurred, it forced the engine speed up to 6,000 revs (more than twice the manufacturer’s specification). Pilots were told to bale out if this happened. There was no safe alternative.
The forward windscreen included a 3inthick plate of armoured glass. In moist air, the gap between normal and armoured glass would mist up, obscuring all forward vision. It also had a forward searchlight which, if tripped, could blind the pilot.
Meanwhile, the forward-firing cannon used time-exploding shells so it appeared the aircraft was flying into flak.
The cannon fired so slowly the planes were often damaged by their own fire.
D. W. S. Fletcher, Wymondham, Norfolk.