scathing

"Hard to keep going" as in the back end hooks up and gets grip, or you're spinning out? With all that grip in the back (assuming you're running shit front tyres) and all the weight from the RB, the car should understeer. Assuming you've got the power to keep the wheels spinning (you say you can get it to start sliding, so initial understeer isn't an issue), it should be easy to control since the understeer makes the rear less likely to come around on you.

Source So you'd think that they were surveying crash investigators, emergency service crews, advanced driver trainers, or perhaps insurance companies. You know, people qualified to give an opinion on driving ability. Well, you'd be wrong. So they're asking plebs out there who's popular, not who's skilled. As anyone who's driven on the road knows, your average person knows sweet f**k all about how to drive a car. They wouldn't know good driving skills if someone clipped an apex right in front of them. If you looked at the number of restaurants and the size of their customer base, McDonalds would have to be one of the most popular restaurants on the planet. But, despite that, somehow I doubt that McDonalds is going to score 4 Michelin stars. Driving isn't fashion (ricers notwithstanding). Popularity doesn't make you good. Too bad that they're not qualified to give that kind of information. I think that the majority of respondents need a frontal lobotomy, and quite possibly a punch in the face, to protect Australia's future from becoming a nanny state where personal responsibility and the ability to learn and grow is preserved. I'm no psychologist / psychiatrist, but according to News Limited that's not exactly necessary. Its this quality of journalism that reminds me that sometimes freedom can be a bad thing. Give the press freedom to write whatever, and you'll always get some money hungry gutter trash writing absolute shit.

From the video posted, to me it looks more like Lowdnes chopped Rick R. Kelly instead, and came off worse. R. Kelly was off the throttle at the time (unless V8 cars run overly rich when they're on the throttle and blow flames out the exhaust) and from the in-car shot he was right up on the edge of the track. And his distance from the track edge didn't change when he and Lowndes collided. From the outside cam you can see Lowndes coming across the track to avoid running into the back of T. Kelly going into that corner. For me, it looked a racing incident. If anything, Lowndes was in the wrong. He was in the wrong track position braking for that turn, and got stuck in traffic. He decided to try and slot the car into 3/4 of a gap, and failed. I don't follow V8 Supercars, and in the traditional Falcon vs Commodore rivalry my heart belongs to the Skyline.

Do you have an Engineer's cert for any of the mods? If not, then they're all defectable. The law states that anything on the car that it wasn't homologated with, or signed off by an engineering signatory, is defectable. There are several "owner verifiable mods" which are your basic swap-outs, like rims, but technically you can get done for quite a few things in there if you don't have an engineering certificate. The cop would have to be quite an asshole to do you for your aftermarket radiator, but even that is potentially defectable (let alone the "common" bullshit defects like the uncovered pods, aftermarket seats, etc).

Its not easy stalling a car with a computer-controlled clutch in a convenient corner of Monaco.

What $350 wax looks like on a factory black 350Z. <3 Its a shame that the pictures of the detailing job he did on his dad's F430 are now broken.

I will be marshalling for half the day, and driving for the other half. Given my lack of turbo, I'll probably drive in the afternoon where the heat won't affect my car as much. Look forward to marshalling for you again.

I'm not saying all white people are two faced, lying, unprincipled and greedy f**kwits whose intellectual handicaps are only surpassed by their inability to comprehend reality....but for the size of the Australian Federal Government Caucasians are very over-represented.

I don't mind the 350Z box. Its a bit heavy, but its got a relatively good feel. I also quite liked the manual in the new MX5 I test drove recently. I don't like the DC5 Type-R's gearbox (no matter what the journos say). Actually, I'm hard pressed to think of a FWD gearbox I actually like. All the ones I've ever driven (Satria, Lancer, Mazda 323, Pulsar, Integra) have been pretty sloppy.

Duncan's got his finger on the pulse, or is some kind of prophet! Schumacher was driving Rick Kelly's car. Either that or Schumacher's been giving Rick Kelly tips on how to punt your competition off the track to win championships.

You can pick a factory kit from an aftermarket kit. Most of us aren't that blind. Unless Mitubishi is sourcing their alloy wheels from the sweat shop in China that makes the Temple of Chrome's flakily coated rims, I'm pretty sure the chromies I've been seeing on Magnas aren't stock. And when did Mitsubishi start lowering cars so much that the tyre sits inside the guard with 5 degrees of negative camber on the back of their FWD cars, and use cannon exhausts?

The R34 GT-R didn't have only 206kW. And considering that was all they were officially allowed to make, its not surprising that they'd advertise it as such. The R32 was a cult car, since it restarted the GT-R nameplate. 206kW back in 1989 was a fair amount. But, in 1999, 206kW was nothing. And since there's no longer a gentleman's agreement on passenger car power outputs, Nissan should be able to make as much power as the engine will manage. And 450hp is sweet f**k all these days, and the VQ will handle far more power than that without raising a sweat.

Don't VL Commodores have an allergic reaction and break out into a horrible, disfiguring rash when exposed to a corner? Or is that just rust?

I held my breath waiting for a response, and I don't know what happened but all of a sudden I came to with paramedics pulling a breather mask off my face and asking me how many fingers they were holding up. I told him "15, ironically the same number of years it took Holden to locally produce a 6 cylinder engine that matched the RB30ET's power output with an engine 25% bigger".

Says the guy driving a Commodore. Because those things are rarer than TVRs on the road.... Because he had to back off in order for the Magna to do its loser flyby. He launched it, pulled away, and then decided not to continue flying down the road after proving his point. I guess he drew the line at the limit of his stupidity by street racing on a space saver, and decided not to follow it up with doing ludicrous speed down the road.

The MX5 does roll a bit, but then it is a street car. I went through a run through the RNP on Monday with a friend who has a MX5, and on the straights at the "top" they were quicker than me. Of course, driving around on Tein Flex with the stiffest spring available for the damper doesn't help with trying to drive down a bumpy road. When I drove it, I found it quite nice. I'd probably get a set of swaybars to flatten the cornering a bit, but the rest of the suspension I think I'd leave alone. Unless its destined for the track, I think the response and the facility to use that weight shifting to aid in cornering, as well as the compliant ride, might be worthwhile.

Well, considering Nissan recently patented another electrically driven at the front AWD system (different to the Micra's), its arguable. The patent could be completely unrelated to the GT-R project, but then again who knows....?

The new Porsche is quicker with the auto than the manual, so maybe in their quest to be a "better 911 Turbo" than the 997 Turbo they've build it with an auto box. The rumors are that its running a 7 speed clutchless sequential or a DSG anyway.

Yeah, but there's no way it would go for that price. We don't have the US' economies of scale to get those kinds of prices. The 350Z is USD$33K in the US, and AUD$67K here. They might get more volumes bringing in the AWD Skyline, since its a mainstream family sedan and not a 2 seat coupe, but you still probably won't get much change from $60K. That said, if the Liberty GT and Mazda6 MPS can sell at that price, I think an AWD Skyline would be a good buy at that price.

Because if you're building a sports car, theoretically it should be quick. And there's few better places to demonstrate that that on the Nordschleife. Its a race track, so you can book the entire course out and run time attack runs without worrying about other road users (which means you can't blame slower times on traffic or worry about "collateral damage"). It also has a mixture of high speed and low speed corners. On camber and off camber. Hill climb and hill descent. Some sections have branches overhead, which keeps the road damp long after rain and puts leaves down. The track itself has 3 different surfaces, not including debris on it, testing the car further. Its also very narrow, like a B-road, unlike modern race tracks which resemble a motorway. And since a lot of people use it, then you can compare times on the same race track. If everyone was willing to fly down to Australia to test their cars on Mount Panorama, then we'd all be obsessed with thos times. But because all of the big performance car manufacturers do at least some testing on the Nurburgring, its now the benchmark. Basically, if your car is quick on the Nurburgring, your car is quick everywhere that a retail customer is likely to use it. It defines the term "proving ground". And its a lot more indicative of how quick your performance car is in the real world than peak power figures or quarter mile times. And this stuff was posted a month ago. Feel free to have a look at the other topics in this forum.

The Veyron's faster around the Nurburgring than the next GT-R's projected time.

So do you. So I guess we both have a penchant for bargearses.

Hasn't it for a while? The R34 GT-R was 1600kg, which is only 100kg lighter than a VT SS Commodore. An R33 GT-R was over 1500kg, making it heavier than a VS SS Commodore.

No license, and launching it on a space saver. The Skyline driver isn't looking that much less dopey than the Magna drier.

Do you think that the marketing guys trying to sell the car would say anything less? I can just see the press release now, "Yeah...the vehicle goes against our traditions and so we don't particularly believe in it....but don't let that dissaude you from giving us a shitload of money for it because you want to one-up the guys in the other German brands that haven't made a tradition of only building sports cars" The company that gave us the original Quattro and started the whole 4WD turbo rally homologation special reckons the TT is a proper sports car. Nissan Australia, by their choice of imports, reckons that Australian family sedan buyers would prefer the FWD J31 Maxima to the RWD or AWD V35 Skyline. Subaru's whole motto used to be that symmetric AWD was the best drivetrain ever....until the last STi was released with the adjustable centre diff, at which point the word "symmetric" seems to have disappeared from their marketing.