scathing

My understanding when reading....I can't even remember which magazine, probably HPI.....is that Autech's cars have their own VIN plates. They're not Nissan's. If I remember, it was an article about the Tex Modify tuned Autech Stagea 260RS. Which makes them an OEM of sorts, so anything they do to the car is "factory". So, they're like HSV / CSV down here. Those cars don't have Holden VIN plates, even though the donor vehicles are Holdens and HSV / CSV are technically different companies.

You have an extra half a litre of displacement and a cast iron block. I'd say you've got a good chance of getting more bang for your buck with the RB25 than the SR20. It might cost a bit less to maintain, but considering no-one does this conversion all your bits will have to be custom....which will cost you a fair amount. Your TCO will inevitably be higher. As everyone else has said, unless you're prepping the car for motorsport and you want to weight balance gains (and perhaps rules on engine displacement may affect you) I can't see a gain.

If he's marketing the car towards people who want a vehicle that has scratches and holes in it, then the car's perfect and needs no work.

And I've driven on RT215's (which, thanks to the resting position of the car, I can easily identify as the tyres). They might be semi slick but they're not an R compound tyre. In the dry, they require almost no warmup time. Especially not with the ambient temperature yesterday. Assuming the driver warmed the engine up first before his foray into the other side of a license suspension, those tyres should have been pretty much up to temp. So "cold semis" is no excuse. And if he hadn't warmed the car up, I don't think the prospective buyers would be too impressed with some guy revving the guts out of a turbo motor before oil and water gets into operating range. If he treats it like that in front of a buyer, how does he treat it when he's alone?

The difference is where and when you choose to do it. In the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney, in the middle of the day, at 2.5x the speed limit is not exactly the same as someone doing the same speed on a deserted motorway late at night, or out in the middle of nowhere at 2AM.

I know plenty of guys with X-Force exhausts and have been quite happy with them. Not sure about the R33 one, but the S15's is a copy of a Trust item. My mate ripped out his Trust rear muffler over one of those f**ked metal-capped speedhumps in Westfields, and the X-Force item bolted straight up to it. You shouldn't need a tune to see some gains. Obviously you'll get more power with a tune (or a retune if you had your stock car tuned before adding the exhaust) but the car will still run properly.

And if he "slammed on his brakes", then chances are there was a reason for his panic stop. Any idea what it was?

I pick my car colours dependent on the vehicle itself - certain cars look good in certain colours. I'd buy a red Ferrari, a blue R34 GT-R, a black BMW, a silver Mercedes Benz, BRG for any Pommy sports car, and the Zonda in unpainted CF.

Lucky Autech is considered a manufacturer, or otherwise it'd still run afoul of the NSW P-plater laws that say you can't have a car where the engine performance is "modified".

That was my biggest issue with what was in the article. "We have to defend him", they say. My first thought was, "Yeah.....f**k using our heads and doing the right thing...we've got an agenda to follow and that doesn't require us to be reasonable". The unions could have found him another job, doing something else. Maybe a desk job where the only thing he can crash is his computer (you shouldn't be fired for crashing your Windows PC 10 times a year, since it'll crash more times by itself) or something that stops him doing something he's clearly not capable of doing, and risking people's lives in the process.

Varietta = convertible It came in NA only, but the S15 coupe was also offered in NA as an entry model.

I don't think I've ever seen a NA S15 in Australia.

Its not street legal. Like other people, I'm wondering about x_pac's application. Nitrous doesn't last too long, so you either need big bottles or to use it sparingly. If your car only lives life a quarter mile at a time its not an issue, but if you're planning on using N2O every time you take off from a set of lights its not the best option.

If he's doing an engine swap anyway, how much does an RB25DET go for?

Its been taken down in the last few months. Drove past there some time in the last 3-4 months, and notice that the GT-R logo has been replaced with a red Nissan one.

Yeah, there's a Road & Track review I read. Even though the G35 is faster, they still gave it to the BMW for being a slightly more responsive vehicle or something.....

Ban Funniest Home Videos, because it glorifies people tripping over and hurting themselves and stepping on rakes, and other injury-causing things. That and its a shithouse show.

No, it doesn't. It implies that owning a high performance car has nothing to do with the performance of the driver. Just because you can afford a Porsche Cayman (or insert other car lauded for being one of the best handling road cars on the market) doesn't mean you can drive one. But just because you can afford a Cayman, it doesn't mean you can't drive it either. So if you have to blanket ban one of the two (since its so difficult to match a car with a driver of its equal) do you ban the Porsche, or the guy that can't drive it?

This is why I don't catch buses, and hate driving anywhere near them. Source: SMH

Yeah, I've stopped going to Nissan dealerships as much as I can because of that. Nissan Australia is still thinking about re-releasing the Infiniti brand. I think they should. Bring in the Skylines, badged as G35s if necessary. As you say, run it as 1-2 dealerships at first (until they can get enough traction for it to spread wider). It'll kill the Nissan brand if they lose their family car and halo model though, but the Australian market doesn't have the numbers to support having the Maxima / 350Z and the G35 sedan and coupe. The only way out, I see, is to do a Lexus and give the V35s a "proper" luxury car interior and price it upstream accordingly. Leave the 350Z where it is, but spec and price the V35 coupe up around $85K + options. That way you've got something at BMW 325Ci pricing that will outrun, and hopefully out-plush, a 330Ci.

Neale Wheels 30 Gould St, Sth Strathfield 02 9642 1002 They did warn me that the wheel isn't as strong as it used to be, so the rims are now street only. If I ever repurpose them for track use I'll buy a new rim.

Walter Rorhl got the Cayman S around the Nurburgring in 8:11. So unless the next GT-R is significantly slower than its predecessors, being faster than a Cayman shouldn't be an issue.

I got mine fixed by Neale's Wheels. Service was reasonable (didn't call me when they'd fixed it, and when I called them the day after their "ETA" day they said it'd been done for a while) but they were helpful, and apparently they take on a lot of jobs that people have said are "impossible" with good results. Repair was $250, but mine was bent in a major way. And for a forged wheel, which may or may not make a difference.

Laws are just words written on a piece of paper. A conceptual tool. And like any other tool, lacking sentience, or even life, they cannot be blamed for anything. I'm blaming the complete lack of foresight, understanding, and actual care of the people who came up with those laws. The people are meant to have the cognitive power to create and wield said tools are the ones to blame. The local tabloid stirs up the blood of the plebs with their moneymaking "P platers Gone Wild" articles (as if P-platers driving cars quickly is some new thing that the same plebs weren't up to themselves back when they were young), and so the government feels the need to do something, and quickly. That something may not actually achieve anything, but politics is perception after all. So the government just decides to ban young drivers from Volvo S40T's, Saab 93's, and Mercedes Benz C200K's (all entry model cars with less power and more weight than a RenaultSport Clio) because its "for the children". People will always kill themselves in cars. Whether it be a "genuine" accident, suicide, or acting like a tool and having an "off". You can't do anything about the first two. The best you can do is mitigate the incidence of the last as much as possible. What I'm saying is that there is no single solution. I am all for restricting P platers. I think we should ban all cars below a certain NCAP or ANCAP ratings from being made street legal. All cars past a certain age should be banned (you can create a "Historic" plate class, where the vehicle is only allowed on the road occasionally like rally plates, for culturally significant collectors items), unless they can pass modern crash testing and hit modern targets for stopping and handling. Clearing a car for rego should be stricter and more heavily enforced, and mechanics who dodgy those reports should be banned from doing business. New drivers should be given a more in-depth driver training course before being granted the ability to drive (driver training stops being "advanced" when it becomes "standard"). It should cover theory, practical and attitude. The testing should also be more stringent. Existing drivers should be retested before their license is renewed. Speed cameras etc should be put in genuine black spots, and the monies gained from it and dangerous driving related infringements should be put into a trust for crash victims, not for the general expenditure by the government. Not even for road repairs, because then the government will "need" money to come in from speed cameras. No accidents, no need for money in the trust. There's probably more we can do, but that's all I can think of off the top of my head.

They're representing the company. They should give a shit.