scathing

Yeah, but we're not talking about you and your holidays. We're talking about Vuster, and his choice based on his needs. I have no doubt that the Stagea / GT-R combo suits you perfectly, so I'm not arguing the point. But, if you think the Stagea will keep up with the HSV (I haven't been in either so I'm not going to say) then fair enough, it might be a better choice. There are other things like interior comfort, newer vs older car (not that Holden / HSV's build quality is anything to write home about either) that come into it for some people.

Why not check a Silvia forum? In a nutshell, the JDM S15 has: Better stereo Ball bearing T28 (the Au Spec uses a T28 as well, but it may not be ball bearing) Rear wiper Different ECU tune (definitely more boost) to make the extra power I think there are some other minor differences like badging etc. The question gets asked so much on NS.com and SilNSW that I've just started ignoring the threads, and I've forgotten now. If you're going to modify the car then the power difference is negligible since, with exhaust, boost control, and FMIC it balances out anyway. JDM cars might be cheaper and have some nicer fruit. Having driven an R33 GTSt and S15, I'd say that the S15 is a lot more nimble (both had stock suspension). The S15 is a bit lighter and with a shorter wheelbase. The downside is that the car can be a bit of a handful sometimes. The S15 responds quite well to mods. There are plenty getting around on 180rwkW+ with exhaust, FMIC, boost controller and management.

One of my friends test drove a Golf R32 when he was going to get rid of his S15. He said it was a nice comfy car, but not the most spirited drive. It was pretty cool to drive a lag-free 4WD vehicle, but it still understeers a fair amount and the handling is a little remote. Its undoubtedly quick, but not engaging.

P.S. Holdens suck balls. Nissan for life, yo.

Vuster doesn't tow race cars, he tows boats or trailers for holidays. So lets say, from SK's example, that Vuster's off on a holiday. He hooks up his trailer / boat to his "towing" car, and tundles along nicely. He then gets to his venue, does his thing, and finds some nice windy road. He's taken the trailer off, and he's now got a car that will play reasonably well. Whereas if SK were in the same situation, he'd hook the trailer / boat to the Stagea and trundle along nicely-er to the destination. He gets to his venue, does his thing, and finds some nice road that looks like fun to take a fast punt in. Unfortunately, if he's not towing the "other" car along with the trailer / boat, he now doesn't have the fast, fun car to go corner carving in. He's got the workhorse. I'm not saying that the Stagea can't be fun around the bends, but SK admits it won't keep up. Or he could go the other way and use the faster car to tow the boat / trailer to the destination (which apparently doesn't do it as well, if at all), and then carve corners quicker on the chance he finds a road worth going for a hoon on. I'm all for having "a car for every purpose", but if you can't afford to move your multiple cars to places you're going to want have purposes for, getting a jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none might be a better decision.

There weren't many of them around until mid 2004. A lot of the Japanese manufacturers underestimated demand and didn't bring that many in. In the last quarter of 2003 there was a 3 month waiting period on 350Zs and RX-8s, and even the Integra Type-R was near impossible to score a test drive in since many dealers couldn't hang on to one long enough to use as a demonstrator.

I work with some Poms who are also car nuts, and apparently the pride that TVR has that everything in the car is British (down to its nuts, bolts and screws) is well founded. They tend to fall apart on you, if they're in working order. The Elise is still technically a drivable street car, so its still compromised. Its setup is relatively understeery (but, according to Motor, so is the hardcore Porsche 996 RS, where a rollcage, harnesses and 2kg extinguisher are the only options), and so a lot of track minded owners tend to swap out the suspension on any car they buy. I still think it would make a great platform for a weekend / track car, and customise it to suit my driving style and needs. I'd want one with the Celica motor, get a free flowing induction system that's still street legal, adjustable streetable suspension and some R-spec tyres and it would suit me perfectly. It wouldn't suit someone who just wants a quiet country cruise (but most of them would buy an MG TF or something soft I suppose), and it won't be the ultimate track weapon, so those people might find my "perfect" car too underdone, just like we find the factory one lacking...

Its not just adding weight that's going to degrade performance, but where its being added. You're adding a fair amount of weight in front of the axle, which increases your polar moment of inertia.

Stop worrying and just learn to rely on dumb luck. With any luck your speedo error and timing error will cancel each other out, and you'll get an accurate measurement! :jump:

On that note.....if I had more dollars than sense, something I've always wanted to do is get a Viper and strap twin turbos to it, and just build it up to make stupid levels of power and torque. I'd just love to hit a highway in the Viper while towing a 12ft yacht or something, and then stomp it next to a light tune turbo import, Aussie V8, or Euro muscle. Assuming I didn't rip the towbar off the car or get flung off the road, I can just imagine the other driver's face watching as the back of my car runs past their A-pillar...........followed closely by a boat

What other mods have you got to your GTSt? Stock for stock, the Elise is one of the quicker track cars out there. But I was thinking that if the Elise is that good, the coupe Exige would be even more fun. The Ariel Atom S2 may be coming out at the end of the year too, which is another option. In the end, I just liked the way it felt. Just the way it handles and turns. I don't race, so if I'm doing track work I'm out there for my enjoyment at my pace. I'd much rather drive a nimble car that's a joy to drive than something that might be quicker, but I have to wrestle around the track. And I really couldn't give a toss about outright straightline power. Sure, its frustrating getting stuck behind cars that monster you down the main straight but then hold you up everywhere else, but I found I can either back off and let them get ahead before running them down, or outbrake them somewhere and use the rest of the back section to pull enough of a gap so they can't pass down the main straight. Its nice to go quicker than everyone else, but there'll always be someone with a faster car. I still remember the last time the ARDA opened up Eastern Creek, and while I was going flat out down the main straight I had Hitman fly past me in his RX-7. It looked like my car wasn't moving.

What's the point of stirring them? It just generates bad blood (which sometimes ends up on the road), and it reinforces the stereotype that Skyline drivers are a bunch of immature shitheads. I don't mind having a bit of a shit stir in a forum you're an active member of (either for fun, or to make some tunnel visioned people actually think about shit and point out how narrow minded they are) but if you're signing up somewhere just to be a troll, you're even worse than them. Back to the cars.....if I needed a comfy sedan with a bit of poke, I'd either get an XR6T or an Audi RS6. Clearly they're not in the same price range, which means in all likelihood when I retire the coupe I'll be a Blue Oval man. If I can afford to upgrade the coupe, of couse, I'll be going Euro. After riding in a mate's Lotus Elise, little else will seem like a sports car again.

Would have been early 2003, at the very latest.

Do you think that an auto SS ute, with a taller first gear and shorter top gear, would have addressed some of the issues you had regarding the gearing? And the Cross8 variant would probably have sorted out the traction problems, considering you're not bush bashing. When it comes to loose surfaces its not that fair to compare a 4WD and a 2WD, or auto and manual since the former is apparently easier for towing - I wonder how a manual GTS-t would do in comparison to a manual SS?

Yeah, when you start talking about "yeah, well if I had that budget and bought cheap car X and spend Y on it, I'd be heaps quicker" it just starts turning into a shitfight. Light bolt-ons are one thing, but when you're talking about spending $40K on a modifying a car and comparing it to a stocker, then you should really get out more.

Its no worse than some of the posts I've seen on here, or a range of other Nissan and import forums.

Well, lets make the next cruise on a Saturday night (or Sunday morning for a dawn run) and not next to a public holiday.

Hey, I made the mistake of following someone in a Silvia. And the traffic I hit were mainly Skylines, with a Civic and a 180SX thrown in. I think that the number of people on the cruise would have been excellent a few years ago when the cops weren't cracking down on any convoy of vehicles, and even now a big cruise at night can still be fun, but the best fun I've had was going out with 2-4 cars on the spur of the moment, and going flat knacker.

Autos are only fun if the thing will hold gear when you tell it to. My first car was the family hack with a slusho, and when I told it to get into 2nd it dropped immediately, and stayed there until you came to a complete halt or put the stick into another slot. The new Tiptronic slushboxes change gear when they feel like it, which is quite annoying when you're barrelling towards a hairpin in a rented Boxster, and your plans of lifting off the throttle and using a combination of engine and disc braking are stymied when you accidentally touch redline and the thing pops up a gear, surging forward. It also decided to ignore my first frantic push to get it to cog back down, so I found myself having to tap the TipTronic button twice to get it to do a single downshift. The delay between hitting the switch and the 'box doing anything (up or down) was slower than an old fashioned auto, too. The car handled beautifully, had brakes you could punish, and bags of grip, which made the recalcitrant gearbox even more frustrating. To modify an old adage, its better to buy a manual Porsche convertible and have people wonder if you're a tosser, than to buy a Tiptronic and remove all doubt.

The last SAU cruise I went on (aside from this one) through the Nasho was relatively bacon free. That wasn't too bad a run, although I did hit a lot of traffic in the Park. But doing a run on a Friday night right before a long weekend on Sydney's most infamous stretch of windy road is asking for trouble. But, like Mark, I do prefer runs with a smaller number than your average SAU turnout. You can't move as quickly when there are that many cars, and it attracts a lot of attention.

Any. On the track, its as much about the driver as it is about the hardware. I've seen a stock Hyundai Elantra get around modified S13s, S15s, R32s and R33's at Wakefield. But then the Nissans were being driven by ricers, and the Elantra was driven by a guy who races Formula Fords. And, to answer your original question, a stock R34 N1 will beat a HSV, so unless the mods done make the car go slower then that's not going to change. Its not really fair to compare a stock car against a "fully mod" one though. The LS1 responds pretty well to "light" mods (especially when you remove the restrictive MAF from them). But, if all you're interested in is quarter mile times, don't waste a GT-R. You're not really getting the point of a GT-R if your idea of what a performance car should do well is one dimensional.

350Zs will start dropping in price, now that the "honeymoon" period for the flash new coupe are over. It doesn't help that there is a "newer" model that makes more power. Coupes are fashion cars, and so after their initial release, when everyone wants one, the price drops as people move on to the next car. It happened to the Monaro. When they came out, they didn't depreciate at all (some people managed to sell them above list price a year after, with the waiting period) but now that you see the Aussie 2 door taxis everywhere they're back to depreciating again. The 350Z is the same. When they came out, they were pretty uncommon on the road and there was a 3 month wait for them. Now that you can't turn around without seeing one, the prices will drop. And we've seen from HSV resales what happens when you churn out a new model every year with a little more power. With the 35th Anniversary model out, regular Track models might drop in price too. The S15 held its value well because of its publicity, and then being discontinued. After winning PCOTY every arriviste wanted one (along with people who wanted to drive a quick Aus-delivered coupe in the $40K price bracket, and your hektic bros wanting to be "different" from their WRX counterparts), and when Nissan stopped building them people who would have paid new-car price couldn't get one, and so buoyed the used car market value.

There are quite a few LandCruisers on the RTA Banned list, so maybe they've figured out what a menace those cars are too

Well, we were at the turn-off to get to the F3, and everyone was doing 40km/hr. Sl!m told me we were going to Waitara Maccas, so I took the F3 turnoff and went there (only to find out everyone was heading through the Gorge). It would have been a hassle without my CB anyway, given all the changes of direction. Next time, Gadget. Next time!

I didn't even make it that far. I just hit Cowan when I got the call that there were cops at Mooney, so I turned around. I took a shortcut to Maccas before finding out everyone was going elsewhere. Ah wells, maybe next time.