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coollyinterferes · 1 year

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How did Speedwagon get his automobile that was shown in the manga?

unprompted asks 【always accepting!】

//Hi nonnie! Apologies for this being so late!! irl has been getting in the way a lot, buuuut on the bright side, this is gonna be a long reply, so I hope that makes up for the wait if only a little!! <3 Regarding your question, the simplest of answers is that they got it in a very illegal manner. This means that, yeah, the gang stole it! Additional bit: they specifically went for a steam car. This was due to cost constraints, as the fuel materials for steam automobiles were more affordable than petrol (the latter was considerably more expensive at the time).

((Under a read more for length reasons))

Now, please allow me to explain a little bit of real life facts and history here before we get into the How Did These Funky Criminals Got Their Hands On That Automobile, because it is important to keep in mind these bits of info for the general context of the story. I’m going to keep it as short as possible, promise!:

Automobiles were not very common in Victorian England. It is said that there were merely about a few thousand in existence, for example. Additionally, the newer models tended to be on the pricier side due to them running on petrol (“newer models” as in those being manufactured from the last 15-ish years of the Victorian era and on, which would be 1885-ish to 1901, approx), and so petrol cars were not much of a thing you’d see outside of the highest social classes since only the very very rich could afford shedding money on petrol every time and as often as a car needs it.

In the case of the automobile we see the gang driving around however, well, it turns out that it appears to have a boiler on it, which very likely means the car is a steam car. Steam cars had boilers on them as part of their fuel mechanisms, and they were able to run on different types of fuels too, with coal being one of them. Wood was another, and there were a few more as well. As mentioned before, these were cheaper and way more affordable options than petrol. And, since we’re on the topic of cost-efficiency, it also needs to be said that a steam car was also cheaper on the long run than it would be depending on a horse-drawn coach that required at least one trained horse to move around (two for better performance) + all the maintenance and work that taking proper care of a horse requires. So, definitely, a steam car was the gang’s best bet as they sometimes have to move around the city for their little businesses, and which could be insanely time consuming if you had no means of transportation (since London is pretty big and, if I’m not mistaken, it was also one of the biggest cities -if not the biggest of all- in the world during the Victorian era).

With all this said, let’s now dive into the details behind the origins of the gang’s car!

For starters, they have owned the car for a couple years by the time the main events in PB take place, which is when we first (and last, unfortunately) see it. Basically, they got it somewhere around the year 1885. They had been planning to get a car for a while before that, though, especially for traveling long distances within London and which could be a difficult task or plain out very time consuming if you didn’t own a horse-drawn coach or any other types of vehicles to move around as we discussed before. Omnibuses already existed back then (they were sort of a “double-decker” communal horse-drawn carriage, basically) but, of course, their use was very limited in the sense that they only covered pre-set/determined routes, they didn’t provide any privacy for the passengers as they would all sit right next to each other and kinda crammed during rush hours (privacy is a must for the majority of the gang’s jobs, really, so this was a huge disadvantage). Omnibuses also had limited work schedules and -as far as I know- they didn’t work overnight (which is when criminal activity would be normally the most active). All that on top of the fact that omnibuses charged every passenger a fare per trip, just like present day buses and other public transportations do, all in addition to the very limited (almost completely null) possibilities of “travelling for free” on them due to space limitations. So, in the end, omnibuses weren’t an option either save for very specific instances.

From day one of this idea, their goal was to steal a car rather than legally getting one, this because, well, it is no surprise that it would take them years to be able to afford a car with their income unless they used up to the last shilling they got from their shady businesses (extortion, stealing, “protection”, and so on) and which would inevitably would put them as well as the rest of Speedwagon’s men into serious financial trouble. And even if they did so, it would still take them some time to be able to save enough to afford it, as they don’t have the full amount ready to be shed. One thing that most people in general brush off in favor of romanticizing the Victorian era in general is that, as silly and “obvious” as it may sound: The rich were really rich, while the poor were really poor, and the system was pretty much built to keep things that way (hence the huge gap between social classes), so it was virtually impossible for a poor person to climb up in social status unless they somehow inherited some fortune or married a wealthy person (the latter being something largely frowned upon, as most Victorians were pretty classist, so any rich person marrying someone of a “lesser” status would definitely be looked down upon and given very weird looks at the very very least, all while their partner would be seen as some kind of opportunist and fortune-seeker and would never be seen as “one of them” regardless of how genuine the marriage actually was). Essentially, saving up wasn’t much of an option for the lower classes, which Robert and his gang, the rest of his men, and all of the slums (obvs) were part of.

They didn’t have a target in mind yet at the time the idea was first suggested (adding this bit here, it was also Tattoo the first one to suggest the idea of getting a car). Overall, the idea of getting a car was firmly adopted from the start, but they soon discarded the possibility of stealing a car in London. The reason being that, due to horseless cars being not too common, they would quickly get spotted before they could even customize the car and make it look different enough to pass as a whole different one (yes, carjackings seem to have been way more difficult to successfully pull off back then due to the limited existences of automobiles were overall, especially in England)

And so they put the bullseye on non-Londoners visiting the city instead. Yeah, the idea sounded silly even to them. Having to follow some guy in order to steal their shit and all, but that was the most viable option at the time, really. After some looking around, they eventually found their guy: A man who was basically some rich scum. The kind of rich guy who has a lot of money and who feels like that somehow gives him the right to treat anyone below him like less than garbage (as attested by some of the people they later got their info from), so the gang really didn’t have any qualms in stealing the fuck out of him. Finding his general info was not a very difficult task, especially through Robert’s best and main informant for most of his criminal activities (you’re gonna learn more about in a minute btw >:3).

Their victim didn’t live in London and rarely ever visited the city. His actual residence was located in one of London’s adjacent counties, too. Not too far from the city, but also not too close to it and, thus, making it difficult for anyone (at the time, of course) to trace the car all the way to London if the gang managed to successfully snatch it all the way there without being spotted.

It is also mandatory to mention that both Li and Robert knew how to drive by this point, with Li having learned merely out of curiosity not long ago, and with Robert having learned from a now ex-boyfriend that he had during a weeks long trip he did to France the previous year (as far as I know, steam cars were more common in France than they were in England at the time). Funnily enough, and despite being the one who originally suggested the idea of stealing a car, Tattoo didn’t know how to drive at the time and so he was not an “active” part during the actual heist. The fourth guy in the gang, the one with the funky and colorful hat in the pic (and who was unnamed in the manga and completely left out in the anime >:/ ), while he also didn’t know how to drive back then, he was the main informant I mentioned earlier for this heist and thus a key part on it.

“Small” side note: Even though Funky Hat Lad -who I’ll be referring to as “Lemmy” from here on, as that’s the nickname he has in my headcanons- is (currently) not a side muse on the blog, I consider him part of Robert’s “main” gang, he just doesn’t hang around a lot as the other three do, but he’s still a close friend and a valuable ally to the three. As stated before, he’s also one of Robert’s most important men along with Tattoo and Li. Most of the time acts as an informant for Robert and his men, however, he can also double and take other roles within the gang whenever it’s needed. He isn’t much of a fighter but he’s armed at all times and he definitely won’t hesitate to use his gun or his knife if the situation calls for it. He also occasionally takes part in the “interrogatories” the gang runs whenever they need to forcefully coax information out of an enemy/rival.

Back to our story, once all the information was gathered and confirmed and the gang knew where and when to strike, all they had to do was go to where this guy lived. As mentioned before, this was a 3-man heist: Robert, Li and Lemmy. The former two to do the driving and most of the physical work (as mentioned before, they were aiming for a “stealth hit and run” but they were prepared in case things went wrong and shit got violent as well as in case some technical issue occurred with the car), and the latter to guide them around, find their objective, and leave the town as swiftly as they came and so everything went out as planned. Tattoo stayed back for this one, partly due to him being unable to drive and the heist already having enough people to take care of the violent part if things came down to that, and partly because he was in charge of keeping an eye on Ogre Street and the gang’s businesses while the boss and the others were away. Like, sure, there’s a lot more men and gangs working for Speedwagon outside of his main guys (Tattoo, Li, and Lemmy), but there always has to be someone assuming the position of the boss to make sure things go smoothly. As you can tell when it comes to such a violent and chaotic place like Ogre Street, it’s impossible to leave it completely unsupervised without shit going really wild (usually but not exclusively started by one of the many and smaller rival gangs), so there always has to be someone designated by Speedwagon to keep things under some form of control in his absence.

One of the gang’s specialties, Robert’s more precisely, are break ins. Stealthy break-ins. Paired up with the info Lemmy had gathered, bypassing security at the guy’s mansion was not an issue, and so the heist itself went without much issue (none, actually), as it ended up being what they’d aimed for from the start: A stealth mission. This was the best outcome, especially considering what I mentioned earlier, about the very limited amount of cars in existence back then and how that could complicate things when it came to stealing a car. With that considered, the last thing you’d want would be for your victim not only to realize on the spot that he’s getting robbed, but to also see you and increase your chances of being successfully tracked down by police and which, inevitably, would also very likely end up turning into prison time for all people involved (especially in this case, where their victim was some heartless scum).

They managed to bring the car over to London without any issues. They even picked some linen and other random but innocuous items as they made their hasty way out of town to put on some of the seats and sort of make the car go unnoticed at first glance to any bystanders’ eyes in case they were later asked in some investigation by the police (and which they knew was going to happen at some point, so they had to cover their tracks in any way they could).

Back in London, they immediately went to hide the automobile near one of the gang’s safe houses in the slums (one that had enough space to keep it indoors). Through Robert’s connections and some favors some folks owed to him, they were able to sort of customize the automobile over the course of days/a couple weeks, making enough changes on it so it wasn’t easily recognizable in case they ever crossed paths with it’s now former owner, but also keeping a good balance with those changes as not to make the car stand out from any others around town and attract unwanted attention. So, mostly the upholstery was changed from dark brown to the lighter brown color you see in the manga, as well as the car itself being re-painted from black to a dark shade of grey-ish brown, along with other minor changes. The side-seat you see Lemmy sitting on was added much later, once they were certain any potential police investigations were over and the car was “officially” theirs.

#[warned y'all this was gonna be Long uu]#[hope this was okay nonny!]#[thank you so much for sending this in!!! it was super fun to write and it was also a hc i'd been meaning to flesh out for the longest time #but never really got around to doing it until now]#[so thank you so much for giving me the chance to do just that!!! <3]#[and also thank you so much for your patience!!]#[hope this was worth the wait]#;answered #;stone masks #;headcanon #;long post #;speedwagon withdraws coolly #[also yeah. le/mm/y's name is a mot//orh//ead ref lol]#;basics

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