scathing

Is there a man law about driving a FWD car like some kind of pussy? I've heard buying a FWD car makes you grow a pair of man cans.

Well if she's managed to not get a ticket in 30 years then, statistically, she's due.

If I remember correctly (and IANAL) when the laws were brought in making seat belts compulsary cab drivers were given an exemption, because they have to spend so long in the car and its uncomfortable. I don't get it. I feel uncomfortable not wearing a seatbelt when I'm driving, but then I also use it to hold me in place as drive around at my favoured pace.

They're making a living driving cabs, not doing practical astrophysics or neuro-surgery....let alone driving in WRC or F1. What have they got to be arrogant about? I've been really tempted to just go absolutely nuts abusing a cabbie a few times; if I wasn't telling them where I lived I probably would. I have, at least twice in the last few years, told a cab driver to just pull over and let me out because I was not going to go any further with him.

Maybe it stands for Pain In The Tootsie?

Has anyone heard the current crop of V8 AMG's? They sound the way a muscle car should. The V8 engine note, in general, for the win. I'm not a big fan of the LS series note, though. I much prefer the sound of the old Holden 308 / Ford Windsors. Oldschool cast iron engines tend to make nicer sounds than alloy engines (kind of like RBs and JZs).

Careful. You'd better not set him off, or his defensiveness at being unable to detect actual discrimination from a colloquialism (similar to his inability to detect satire) will see him riding the Waaaahmbulance to the nearest mod to have your thread deleted.

I regularly get cabs home from work (Cabcharge), and they are the only people that manage to really scare me on the road. Their inability to drive to conditions, stay in one lane, negotiate traffic smoothly, use indicators, or maintain constant throttle/speed beggars belief. The fact that they also disable their airbags and ABS, and don't wear seatbelts, freaks me out considering idiots like this would be more likely to crash than middle aged, pissed, old blokes driving down the Great Western Highway. I used to think that if you did something for long enough, eventually you gain enough experience to stop sucking at it. But cabbies seem to be an exception. Learner drivers have better car control than your typical cab driver.

I hope so. But, more importantly for brand perception, I hope the goon behind the counter (its not like your average customer gets to see the grease monkey) gets some customer service training comparable to the amount of money a new GT-R buyer would expect. I suppose they probably won't let apprentices near the car in case they break something, but like I said a minor service could be done by anyone. What Nissan needs to do is make sure the customer-facing staff aren't like the complete f**ktards that I've had to deal with at the two service centres I've visited. The more they sell to well-heeled gentlemen, the more that will appear on the used car market for us regular people.

Some people, you just can't reach.

Because they're the ones actually committing the crime, and you need to draw the line somewhere. "Material support" or "aiding and abetting" for such an offense is bullshit. Otherwise, why not hold the dealer responsible for selling them the car? The OEM for making it? The finance company responsible for lending them the money to buy it? Tyre companies for selling them the rubber that their car drives on? Oil companies for selling them the fuel that makes the car run at all? The RTA, VicRoads, etc for building roads that let them drive quickly on it? The parents for giving birth to them? The grandparents for giving birth to the parents who gave birth to them? Society for raising a member that thinks its OK to do so? When you start talking second to third degree responsibility, inevitably you can blame anyone and everyone with a tortuous enough "justification".

I am most probably coming; you might want to find another backup too in case I don't but otherwise you can ride in the barge.

I like some of them. Personally, I think that heavy vehicles (4WDs, I'm looking at you) and sports cars should have individual licenses to regular passenger cars. Just because you can drive to the shops in a Charade doesn't mean you can pilot a Land Cruiser down a motorway, or drive a Clubman. And I think that Provisional licenses should only be available for passenger cars (but reduce the P plate duration to 1-2 years), so novice drivers have to develop their skills in more benign vehicles before "stepping up" to a more challenging vehicle. If you get busted driving a car you're unlicensed for, then one of two possibilities occur. Either the owner of the vehicle permitted an unlicenced driver to operate their vehicle, in which case the car will be impounded and the owner will have to come get it back after paying a fine for knowingly permitting an unlicensed driver to use their vehicle and the impounding fees. If the owner denies evern lending the car, then they must provide a statement / sign a statutory declaration stating that the driver took the vehicle without permission.....and who then gets charged with car theft. When the car is pulled over, the cops should be able to obtain the owners' contact details from looking up the plates. If they can't contact the owner or confirm it was OK then they arrest the driver and clear it up. I wonder how many unlicensed people will drive a car if it means a night in the lock-up and a potential criminal offense on record, rather than just the current slap on the wrist? I'll save how to determine what a sports car or heavy vehicle is for another debate, but needless to say a bit more thought should be put into it than the current knee-jerk reaction. I do like power/weight as a determining factor, as well as how the OEM advertises the car (since you can't always measure sports cars just on power/weight). Classification for a "heavy vehicle" could start off at cars that qualify for the lower import duties for such vehicles, and then come up with tweaks to include locally made cars like the Territory or 2WD SUVs like the upcoming Kluger, while permitting people to drive reasonable "offroaders" like the Audi AllRoad, Volvo V70XC, and Subaru Forester.

Its true for any discipline, unfortunately. Lets put it this way, what calibre of employees do you think you can attract if you pay below-market salaries but have laws an policies in place that make it practically impossible for you to fire them, and all kinds of free "training" and "flexi" days where the staff don't need even pretend to do any real work? I've got mates who work in the public service, and the stories I hear of some of the slope-brows they have to work with........

Welcome to Godwin's Law.

Value for money or not, most people who can splash out that much money for a car generally expect a certain amount of service. And, to be quite blunt, they're not getting it. Me, I bought the car and not the brand so I count as one of the "enthusiasts" you mention, but the vast majority of new-car buyers are mid life crisisers or yuppies that want to be seen in something sporty and either can't afford an Audi TT or don't want to be seen in a hairdresser's car (even though they drive the Z like one). As the Australian delivered R32 GT-R, enthusiasts can't keep even a low-volume vehicle afloat if its too expensive and lacking that "total experience" I mentioned earlier. Luckily its been almost 20 years since the R32, and the brand perception of Japanese cars has moved a bit, but if (lets say) $180K GT-R owners get the same level of treatment at the dealership as someone driving a Micra, there will be a backlash. A $70K Z isn't quite the same, but I know quite a few owners that have thought, "If this is what happens when I buy a flagship product, I can't imagine what it'd be like if I bought something middle-of-the-range like a Maxima or Murano" and sworn off every buying another Nissan again. I know that, if I were to ever buy a family sedan it would either be a V35 (or V36 if we're getting them) and bypass the entire "Nissan Australia" experience, or going to another brand. If Nissan don't start some kind of specialist dealership / service centre for the GT-R I'd say that the car's sales (and therefore long-term viability) will suffer. But there's not much point having a dealership (or a subsection of the dealership) for just one car; to help with economies of scale they could have the staff trained as "Nissan Sports Car" dealers and service mechanics to service both the GT-R and the 350Z (and if they ever build another Silvia, them too) and run them separate to the "Nissan econobox" section.

No, but there are still quite a few single-vehicle families out there that are cashed up enough to buy a Merc, but not cashed up enough to buy another car for junior. My family, for example. When I was on my L's and P's I was driving the family's only car. So's my brother, now. Yeah he could go get a job himself and buy something, but then some parents are like "the car my novice child drives needs to be new so it has modern safety features"...you know, actually thinking about safety rather than just knee-jerk reactions, and as well as the status symbol for themselves. It doesn't make as much sense to us, being young and childless, but parents actually worry about their kids and some don't want their kids rolling in old nuggets with no crumple zones, no ABS, no air bags, etc. They want to let their kids drive their car with all those TLA safety features, which they'd never afford by themselves, but now have to stick to buying an Audi or BMW.

Its not the car mechanically that should see it separated. Its the expectation of the customer base that can afford to purchase their car. A lot of people are, amazingly, not car enthusiasts. For them owning a certain brand of car is more than just what it has under the bonnet, its the entire experience over ownership. How they're treated when the car is taken in for servicing is a part of that experience, and it affects the perception of the brand. It doesn't matter if you're driving a Feroza or a Ferrari. A minor service on any car is just a fluid flush, and checking the consumables. Any apprentice whose got experience on the your standard econobox could do that service on the Ferrari with a workshop manual and maybe half a day's training. But if you owned a Ferrari, you'd expect the guy behind the counter at the service centre to treat you with a certain amount of respect and courtesy after sinking $400K+ into one of their vehicles. Someone buying a $10,000 runabout probably wouldn't care so much if the service centre guy is abrupt, occasionally late in returning the car, accidentally leaves the seat and carpet protectors in, etc. There's probably little difference, mechanically, between a Lexus and a regular Toyota. But Toyota gets the concept of brand engineering, and so they keep Lexus service centres completely separate. Lexus staff are trained and performance measured a lot more in customer relations, and so an entry model IS250 customer get a metaphorical blowjob from the service centre where some guy rolling in an optioned-out Aurion wouldn't even get a reach-around. And that's what Nissan is failing at. Like I said, I know a couple of guys that went from Alfas and Lexus' to 350Z and cracked the shits because of what its like to take the car in to do servicing. They're not looking at modifying the cars too much and so don't want to take it to a non-Nissan workshop (it also looks nicer in the log books). Most of them still love the car, but have said they'd never buy another one when the time comes to move on.

That is some of the stupidest shit I've ever heard. An attitude like that is why people like you shouldn't have licenses. You don't need a license. Its not a right. Its something you should prove you should have, with a combination of skill and maturity. And just because you pay tax that funds lawmakers doesn't mean shit. There's laws against murder too, but it doesn't give taxpayers the right to kill other people just because they pay their wages. Grow the f**k up.

Yeah, and I know the guy who built it. That guy was well funded. Every few months he was offloading more high-quality parts as he decided to "upgrade" or change the focus of the car. I think he's got a Endless BBK for a Skyline for sale at the moment. On the plus side, I gave his OEM Brembos a good home.

Nothing wrong with pursuing dreams. Chasing fantasies, on the other hand..... A 1000hp car, no matter what make or model, is a massive ask. Not just to build, but to maintain. If you can't afford to service and fuel the car then its not going to make 1000hp no matter how big the turbine or how forged the internals. Its going to make 0hp because it can't ever be started. If I were to post on here about which local insurance companies would be Veyron-friendly, considering I can't afford one and I probably never will, I'd expect a similar response. Its not even a dream. The Mines' Ultimate Response GT-R makes 600hp at the fly and that thing is a beast. What is he going to do with a 1000hp car anyway?

Probably not. I doubt that Fords and Holdens, who call Melbourne their home town, will ever get their locally made products completely banned. Its OK to ban V8s as they're not "Howard Battler" cars. Funny how a 180kW entry model Commodore, with its dearth of safety features, is just fine for P platers but an enty model C Class Merc is not.

VicRoads is Following the RTA's example and banning FI Cars for P platers. Unsurprisingly, the prestige European brands that build so shyte they're struggle to make 100hp/L, even with forced induction. The full article is located here. That last paragraph I quoted is my favourite. Yes, a 135kW C Class Mercedes (that power is well up from the 120kW it used to be) in a 1.5 ton car is "high powered". And this guy is the Roads minister in Victoria. I always knew being ignorant of a field was the best way to obtain its political portfolio, but it seems even basic physics is beyond the dropkick.

Its piping for the oil cooler up front. As Stinky Rooster said, its a copy of 70's Japanese touring cars. As a Skyline fan I would have thought you'd pick one of the most iconic exterior features of the old KPGC10 race cars.

Autech S15. 'nuff said.