scathing

Or on a more affordable end of the scale, any modernish Euro sports car. Its Jap imports that get hassled by the cops - roll around in a modern VW Golf GTi / R32, Polo GTi, RenaultSport Clio, etc with non-AutoSalon-bodykit type mods and you won't get looked at twice.

I'm from Sydney, so I've got NFI where anything is. I was just driving around looking for photo backdrops. I think I went past the Telstra Dome (but it was on a Sunday night, but pre-midnight) as well as a few shops and what looked like apartments. There looked to be a restaurant nearby and 2 people standing on the road waiting for someone to pick them up. Then on the Monday when I took those pics with the 350Z-Tech guys at 9PM, I went past the Hummer store, STi Docklands, and the BMW / MINI showroom. There were a few cars passing through, but aside from that it was a ghost town.

The pigeon has spoken. RTA fails.

Pretty sure it was at a zebra (aka pedestrian) crossing. Can't be bothered watching the ad again to verify.

Was at the smash repairers today discussing getting my front bar resprayed. Apparently the receptionist says she's seen it already.

$90K American would put the car at around AUD$300K or so, once you factor the usual raping we get when cars are imported (they're estimating under USD$70K for the GT-R in the USA, and about AUD$180K Down Under). The Australian government isn't particularly interested in cutting us some slack when it comes to "green" cars (we don't get concessions on hybrids like the Prius), and on such a niche vehicle there won't be much by way of economies of scale. If one were affordable, I'd buy one. Amazing off-idle torque and high speed, and I want an Elise. The only thing I'd miss is the sound of an engine...but since the Elise is a 4 banger and all 4 bangers sound like shit, I'd not missing that much.

Go Ransom style, and offer the desired blackmail money to bounty hunters instead.

Pro Concept is 5 minutes down the road.

Entrapment isn't illegal in this country. That's how cops can go around geeing people up to drag race and then booking them when they launch it. If I had the financial resources, I'd buy a VS Commodore and break it on purpose so it blew smoke, leaked all kinds of fluids, etc and grab a fully engineered import (with all the paperwork on board) to go cruising defect stations together. When the Commodore gets waved by and the import gets defected for "contaminated brake fluid", take the coppers to court for discrimination.

You're right. They should be out there defecting you for having an uncovered pod filter. What the cop thinks is only partially relevant. What they can prove, based on the rules of evidence, should be all that matters when it comes to handing someone an infringement. So, what evidence do they have? Speed detection devices require the device itself to be stationary. They have to tail someone in a car with a recently calibrated speedo for a certain length of time in order to book them for speeding without a detector. They can issue an estimated speed, but as they're judging from a moving vehicle that puts their perception in a non-constant frame of reference. That said, you'd have to go to court to contest it. The guy needs to weigh up the cost and inconvenience of legal action (and the potential for losing) vs just paying it and moving on. If it means losing a license then yeah, by all means. But if its a first offense.....you could probably just write a letter to the RTA and get let off with a warning.

From JDM Style Tuning:

Source: Courier Mail (and rest of the article there) How f**king stupid is the RTA? They reckon this one ad is going to change young drivers' behaviour? Its also a bit sexist - there are more than a few girls in the automotive subculture these days. Telling girls they've got a small penis will probably make them stop driving fast will be about as effective as telling me smoking while pregnant will make me quit cigarettes.

Because that kind of governance is called anarchy. There are plenty of things you can't do, most of them for what most would consider good reason (which is why they get enacted into these things called laws, which tell you what you can and can't do). Do you actually know what communism is?

The fear will still be there. If the cop wants to be a tocal tnuc, they can still defect you for the most random shit anyway.

I've been in Docklands, and the place is empty. Some cars use it to drive from one place to another, but hardly anyone stops there. I didn't see any shops or restaurants that were open after hours. I'm not sure if you need 8 cops there to patrol what amounts to a wasteland, but the flipside means that you've got no real business being there in the first place (aside from the fact that we live in a "free society", unlike oppressive police or theocratic states, so ostensibly we should be allowed to go to any public place we want) so anyone out there is doing something dodgy. Mind you, being as open and straight and deserted as it is I could see it being quite the "street racer" hangout. While I was there (under the Bolte Bridge) I saw a couple of guys tear past, and there was another group of imports taking photos in that area.

If you're too simple minded to actually think about why you're doing something instead of just what you're doing, you deserved to get fleeced. I love my e-tag. It streamlines going through toll roads (on the rare occasions I use them), and it means I don't need to carry a crapload of change in the car. If parking meters took credit cards or EFTPOS I'd never need coinage in the car, which if it became widespread would drop a reason for casual "smash and grab" thieves who decide to lift your spare change, CDs (I only keep burnt copies of CDs in the car these days anyway), and other easily cash-convertable items from your car. Its like people bitching about credit and EFTPOS cards making people not think about the money they spend, because there's no physical currency transaction. If you can't work out that getting something that you know isn't free is going to cost you something and budget accordingly, I've got some mobile phone ringtone downloads and "CD club" subscriptions that you might be interested in.

Track record for such legislation says no.

Just reply with, "You'll have to speak up so I can hear you, since you can't catch up."

Really? I've picked up infringements in other states, but they're not mentioned when I check the RTA web site for my license details.

Yeah, shouldn't be an issue. I've stretched a set of RT215s in that dimension onto a 9.5" wide rim, and even with the amount of abuse I've put the car through I haven't had any problems.

Probably helped that, when Subaru Australia first started churning them out, Mitsubishi wasn't selling Evos down here at the time. I would have loved to have seen that trademark violation case.....when companies go to war over branding its amazing how petty they can end up getting.

The most common thing you hear about when journos drive race cars is how "easy" they are to drive. But they're also driven in a far narrower range of environments than your average road car. For example, most race pads are pretty ineffective when cold and DOT 6 brake fluid is hygroscopic. Hitting the brakes and having nothing, or having your brake pedal go mushy after a few weeks, there is pretty threatening. But since that situation pretty much never occurs when you're hammering it on the track and doing full fluid flushes after every event, its not relevant for a race-oriented car. Its just not an option for engineers on an OEM street car. In the same way, if a race car never drops below the minimum required speed for the aero to actually work then that threatening, sudden, grip transition is moot.

Because the government management of roads is state-based, not national. On the plus side, it has traditionally meant that if you got done for speeding in another state you wouldn't lose points off your license.

I remember having this discussion a while ago in another thread, but are the 595RS an R Compound tyre? The treadwear rating of 180 is a lot higher than most R Comps. That figure puts it more in line with a Falken RT215 / RT615, which has a semi slick pattern but is certainly not an R Comp.