The Metric vs Imperial Paradox

I have had a good month, a very good month. Because I have had a good month, I can with some relief think about plunking some money down for some summer tires. After giving my old car a good spring clean-up and realizing what a beautiful classic machine it truly is, I figured why not splurge and put on some big chrome wheels and some fat sporty tires for the summer. Maybe even a high performance exhaust system with a bit of a bark to it, and some dual chrome tips. I have accepted my motorhead/redneck recessive gene, so why not have some fun with it?

So I began my research for some nice wheels, beginning of course with the internet. This quest has turned into a week-long obsession, which is driving my wife-like-unit crazy. After searching through literally thousands of models of wheels, I have found only one model that fit both my criteria and my car; a 17” wheel with a classic 5 spoke design.

But the real intent of this column is to shed light on the world’s strange system of measurements. Take the example of a typical tire measurement: 195/75-15. The first number is the measurement of the tire width, in millimetres. OK, fine, that makes sense. The second number is an aspect ratio; it tells us that the sidewall is 75 percent the size of the tire width. Who cares? Just give me the sidewall measurement! But the truly bizarre thing is the third number, which is the diameter of the wheel, given in inches! Great… We’re already confused trying to figure out the aspect ratio of our sidewall, and now we have to deal with the wheel diameter in imperial measurements!

So now that I have found a wheel which actually fits my car, the measurements for that wheel are as follows: 17” x 8”. I’m dealing with inches again, but now I have to fit to a tire width which is given in millimetres. Arrghh!!

This got me thinking about how unsuccessful we’ve been in our quest to become metric. When a visitor asks me, “how high are the mountains here?” I go into imperial-mode and I tell them approximately 7000 feet. If I am talking about my skis, or how much fresh snow has fallen, I switch to metric and talk in centimetres.

If I buy a plot of land and need to have it surveyed, the surveyors come in with their metric instruments and do all their plotting in metric. When they are finished, the guys building my house work entirely in imperial. Strange but true.

If somebody asks me how many kilograms I weigh, I haven’t the slightest idea. I am 180 pounds, you figure it out. If I see a car gets an economy rating of 15 Litres p/100 kms, I immediately get my calculator out to figure out the MPG rating, so that it makes sense to me. In the MPG system, the larger the number, the better the economy. In the new system, the lower number, the better the economy. Why not Kilometres per Litre? Who decided to switch the factors around? It’s a conspiracy designed to confuse us, I know it is.

I was probably 10 or 11 years old when Canada officially went metric, but I am convinced now that this was a bad experiment, because we haven’t yet learned how to be entirely one or the other. I doubt that we ever will. We are doomed to be forever stuck somewhere in the middle.