>They’re ok when they work but when they don’t they can burn your house to the ground or empty your entire NAS to a random IP in China.
I have never come across the term 'shed' in this context, either in urban slang or formal speak, please can you provide a valid source and/or clarify the origin of this term?
Yes AFAIK it started in Essex where someone would buy a “shed” car typified by the Vauxhall Nova with various attachments to it and drive it around town all night being a “Barry Boy”. As we all got older, grew up and went to work in the city (London) it seems to have been adopted as a definition for anything that looks ok from the outside but is made of sewn together corpses and bits of tape and straw inside.
I’ve heard it used in London and Nottingham regularly.
I always thought shed came from them being the sort of rust bucket normally found abandoned in a shed. Barely running, owned by someone who can barely fix or fuel it. So it would be somewhere to sit parked - and listen to the crappy stereo at max distortion - with bits falling or rusting off it in time to the bass. Least that's how we used it oop north in the 80s. The car equivalent of a rat bike. Both sewn together corpses, and animal corpses hiding in dark corners...
Pistonhead's Shed of the Week[1] is far too upmarket to be a proper shed - they all work. :)
Not wealthy - they just stole the fuel or put £5 a time in the tank after asking everyone in the vicinity to "gizz uz a fiver mate".
I think that's where shed started. A lot of people got lucky / rich and actually finished their car project. I had a proper shed which was a series III land rover with an engine in pieces in the back rather than the front. When I lived in Nottingham there were a lot of proper sheds!
Those "sheds" on pistonheads are ridiculously too good to be called a shed.
>They’re ok when they work but when they don’t they can burn your house to the ground or empty your entire NAS to a random IP in China.
I have never come across the term 'shed' in this context, either in urban slang or formal speak, please can you provide a valid source and/or clarify the origin of this term?