scathing

That's soft, commuter driving talk. If you want to buy something comfortable and practical, buy a VW Golf TDi. You should be prepared to make some sacrifices for a good sports car, like having to carry a raincoat around with you. I want an Atom S2, and I'll buy bike leathers if I have to. As an aside, don't expect much dynamic excellence from the current C6. I've been out for a cruise with the head of APS, who've got one as a development platform, and apparently the steering wheel is only vaguely connected to the front wheels. Through the Black Spur near Melbourne, I was significantly quicker than he was despite having a third the power, crap rims / tyres, and less driving ability than him. The Z06 reviews I've seen online, of course, reckon its the dog's bollocks when it comes to track handling, but then in terms of fuel consumption and ride its not particularly practical either.

What did he think it was going to do?

Autech Stagea!

What I want to know is how a "2m drop" has the car ending up on its roof? The rims look unscuffed, so its unlikely it was tipped on its side and then rolled over.

Fnark that. Elfin MS8 Clubman.

The 1999 Maserati 3200GTs ran 3.2L twin turbo V8s. I wonder if the owner would take $50 for the engine? I could find a good home for it. Probably bung it in an R31 or something.

This cracks me up, though: The guy lives in an exclusive part of a pretty exclusive suburb, and we're talking about some stupid bint (who decided to ignore a boycott of a country that decided to stone a woman over having a child out of wedlock, as requested by her prime minister, so she could go giggle and probably tell everyone she wanted "world peace") that parked her brother's Maserati in a construction zone for 2 days, and he has the gall to call these workers "arrogant".

Source: SMH

What they're fighting for now. The international interests of large corporations that don't feel that ethics have a place in business, aside from marketing guff.

Is that why Pvt Kovco got shot...?

I'd consider a HSV GTS or Senator if I needed a family car and could afford that price bracket, but I'd need an aftermarket bodykit. The lines for all the openings seem a bit too haphazard to my eye. But with a 6.0L V8, MRC and massive brakes it should go OK for a big-ass sedan. And I generally like the new shape. It needs a bit of cleaning up, but its a nice base to work from. That said, for the cost of a HSV GTS I could buy a Mitsubishi 380 for carrying people (I don't tow anything so the lack of V8 isn't a major issue) and have enough money to own a R33 GT-R for when I wanted to have some fun. A couple of years ago they ran a HSV, V8 M5 and AMG E55 at the Nurburgring in the hands of an independent driver familiar with the track. The HSV was the quickest. I'd love to see the current V10 M5 and the new GTS MRC go head to head on the 'ring, and see if the HSV is still quicker.

I beg to differ. Well, not differ, but provide a different perspective. The data shows that people are more likely to do something stupid on the road if they're in groups (i.e. there are witnesses). Determining meaningful information from the data, however, is something else entirely. I don't think its relevant whether said witnesses are in the same vehicle, or in other vehicles. How many times do you see groups of cars driven in a pack that launch hard at a set of lights, or dice through traffic? Those same people don't do it if they're not in a pack. And given how many people these days drive with their ears welded to their mobile phones, its not like drivers in other cars can't call them and egg on their mates. Unlike the past, you're never out of vocal range of your mates to tell them to "smoke it at the lights, bro". From personal experience (and I realise its not empirical) when I see 4 guys piled in to a car what'll usually happen is that the guys in the back seat will be yelling out the window as they drive past. When I see 4 guys in 2 cars, what'll usually happen is that they'll both gun it and weave through traffic trying to get ahead of one another.

Well, when one car crashes with 4 passengers its not guaranteed that they'll all die. And whose to say that 2 of these idiots street racing won't lose control and crash into each other. Instead of one car careening into the scenery or into oncoming traffic and possibly killing bystanders, you've now got 2 cars pinballing down the road. Double the debris - double the chance of it causing collateral damage. We can speculate all day about the pros and cons of each - in the end, the only way to guarantee that this stuff won't happen is to lock these people up in padded rooms. Its not practical, but the only way you can guarantee people (youths or not) don't run amok in the outside world is to not let them into the outside world.

Lets say you'd otherwise carry 4 people home. Now instead of having 4 guys in 1 car, you've now got 4 guys in 4 cars. So you're saying that if they're all in one car that the designated driver will "hoon around and carry on", but if they're all following each other down the road and lining up at the lights that they'll be driving Miss Daisy? No chance of showing off? Riiiiiiight

There's a NSW Motorkhana championship. Can't find any info on it online, though. And Aaron McGill runs skidpan sessions as a part of his Automotion driver training. If you can get enough people interested, he can always put on a day for you. The NSCC runs a motorkhana once a year, as well as being invited by the LBMCC for a friendly comp with the WRX club. I'm sure there are more, if we go and have a look.

I used to have the attitude that if you do something for long enough, eventually you should get to a point where you don't suck at it. Experience has shown me that this is not the case. That's the difference between the young and the old. As 4door_Sleeper said, a more experienced driver is more likely to see when a dangerous situation will occur, and button off. The younger driver might be able to recover from more "moments" behind the wheel with the reactions of youth, but the older driver is less likely to get into them in the first place. And the Black Spur is hardly the place to be learning the finer points of car control. They're blind switchbacks, there's zero run off, and there's a lot of trees. During the day you get a shitload of traffic, and at night the lack of light (artificial or natural) means you have no visibility. You can't learn to push your car to the limit on a road like that. You'll always have to hold back a bit, just in case. If you don't have a fair amount of experience behind the wheel and you reckon you go flat out to learn on a road like that you're either slow, some kind of "driving God" freak of nature, or living on borrowed time.

Truth.

I was hanging out with some guys from JDM Style Tuning on Saturday night, and we ended up at Thornleigh Maccas for...erm....food. Pulled in there, and the carpark was full of modified cars. Quite a few Silvias, 3-4 350Z's (including Rated R Designs' Team 5Zigen one), a Skyline or two, and a Porsche Cayman S. Apparently they left P6 when the cops showed up after several cars pulled burnouts and donuts in the carpark / road. I ended up taking some photos of the 5Zigen car, but didn't really get around to taking photos of the rest since I didn't know anyone there. I ended up going for a drive nearby (all below the speed limit on private roads, of course) and a few of them were also on this private road, although quite a few took the freeway. Soft.

Put me down as a maybe. If I'm in Sydney, I'll be there.

Its a Cartier. I hope you're a girl.

How about we do another experiment with a whole bunch of old fogeys complaining about the "youth of today", and ask them if they're senile and out of touch with their progeny, and then see how many of them think they're still lucid?

Because that is a P Plater exclusive thing The two cars / drivers I find least likely to give way to me when I'm at a zebra crossing are (in this order): * Old people in Camrys / Corollas * Middle aged women in 4WDs I've lost track of the amount of times I've stepped up to a zebra crossing, seen one of the aforementioned cars about half a dozen carlengths down the road (so well within stopping distance), and stepped out to find that they're not stopping. But hey, its OK if they run me over on a pedestrian crossing because they have years of experience doing it, and they weren't speeding.

I'm not a P Plater, but you can feel free to give me one of these too.

1. How is this "General Automotive"? 2. The fact that you think sites are going to be censored on a tiered Internet model just goes to show how retarded some of you clowns are, as if you posting in the wrong forum, bad grammar and punctuation, and domain that has nothing to do with your topic, didn't. Censorship? Descrimination? No freedom to post on whatever forum you choose? While you're the polar opposite of Senator Ted "Series of Tubes" Stevens, you're just as clueless as he is. For the record I am all for "mandatory" net neutrality, but idiots like you with no f**king idea about the situation make reasonable and intelligent proponents of keeping the internetworking priority "level" look bad. There are plenty of situations where users may elect to run a tiered Internet, but in my opinion it should be the users' choice. If you want to support net neutrality, sign petitions and provide financial support to the EFF and other organisations that have people knowledgable in the field...and keep your traps shut until you actually get a clue.

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