scathing

EDIT: Reply out of context

Wheels are there to hold your tyres. What's the point of running a wider rim if you're not going to use that width to crowd more tyre onto? All that extra metal would be unsprung ballast.

Nothing wrong with an old Ford Escort. RWD, light, and a popular track car so mods are out there. Can you get a Datto 1600 for that amount?

Pretty much, yeah. It depends on if you're building the car as a pure race car driven by an experienced driver, or a road car to be driven by all sorts. Keeping the car's behavior progressive is a must for any engineer setting a car up for OEM. That's why they make the suspension choices they do - you may not be able to corner as fast as with harder suspension, but when you approach and exceed the limits they're well telegraphed and very predictable.

They probably won't, because I don't think they'll be seeing this car. The JDM Civic Type-R is a four door sedan. To its credit, it has a more powerful variant of the K20 than the British Civic Type-R hatch, and also has a reinforced chassis (which the one we're getting does not). Once again we're getting a shithouse Type-R - the DC5 Integra Type-R wasn't the same spec as the JDM car either.

Ultimate rice accessory. Pipes that narrow would be relatively restrictive, so you'd look like a tool while killing engine performance.

You must live in Boganville if Falcodores headline the "young driver menace" articles in your local rag. In most major cities its grey imports that hold the pride of place when it comes to driving at stupidly high speeds through metropolitan streets.

Courtesy of Sinfest.

I saw that Evolution model mentioned on Drive, but then those guys are regularly a few drops short of a piss. They could be quoting the same source as the J-Spec article though. I find it quite unlikely that Nissan would use the same nomenclature as Mitsubishi for their halo car, despite the fact that the Impreza WRX has "Evo" variants.

Even then its boring. Unless your big power machine starts smoking up its tyres on the dyno, or blows its engine, or some other "wow" beastliness, a 1000hp run looks no different to a 200hp run. Oh look! The rear wheels are spinning on some rollers and its making a lot of noise!

Yep, I know. I misread the thread as being "cars you want but your country's local divisions of car OEMs won't import" rather than "just can't get". Otherwise, we can technically get any car in this country as long as we're willing to pay for it...and get a CAMS racing license and use it as a race only import.

Search and ye shall receive

On topic, I think the main thing drifters can do right now for the sport is persevere. It would be far better to take a long term view, and make incremental gains, then trying to match the size of the competition overseas. We don't have the population or capital of Nippon or the USA to support a massive launch, so you have to work from a steady base. It took ages for drag racing and rally to make it big as an Australian sport, and even now they're still relative underdogs compared to the V8 Supercars and MotoGP. I think that it would be good to mature the sport out of the limelight, where the mentioned indiscretions novice racers have made don't make front (or back) page news. Its true that, for general public consumption, drifting will need a certain amount of "spit and polish" that it currently doesn't have. It took rally ages to get out of the "anorak" crowd willing to stand in the middle of a cold winter's night to watch cars whizzing by. Drifting needs to build itself into being a "reliable" motorsport (consistent crowd base, teams that show a certain professionalism and maturity, as well as the lurid excitement of the sliding through a narrow road surrounded by trees) to attract factory support, like Subaru and Mitsubishi did for rallying. As an aside, I remember reading an internal Nissan magazine a while ago at my mechanic's, and they had a piece on drifting. How it was one of the world's fastest growing motorsports, how exciting it is to watch, and how well represented Nissan was in the local competition. I found it quite laughable, considering the vast majority of Nissans competing were grey imports that Nissan Australia wouldn't touch.....and from the stories I heard from the GT-P competitors Nissan Australia hates motorsport.

There you go using the word "Japanese" again, in complete insensitivity to the rich culture and language of the locals. Funny how your bleeding heart doesn't extend to your own preconceptions. I'm a person who believes in principles. I'm very anti racism, but I'm also very anti-victim. If someone is actually being bigoted I'll have a go at them, but by the same token people who constantly "cry wolf" give me the shits because their actions undermine genuine attempts to curb racism. I'm quite sensitive to racism, having grown up dealing with it. But I'm also not foolish enough to get hypersensitive to it and perceive any reference to my race as being a slight. Yeah Japan got nuked by the Americans, but I have a few compatriots who haven't forgotten about the rapes at Nanjing, and there are quite a few Australians who had immediate family members who've enjoyed the tender mercies of the Japanese military in POW camps during the war. Where's your "global sympathy" for them? If some Anglo Saxon baby boomer lead a boycott against Nipponese products because of what happened to his parents "during the war", he'd be called a racist. Fact is, people aren't using the term in a pejorative manner. That's what defines racism, that concept of negativity.

I got the RTA one, since you could choose not to use it and there was no penalty. With the ones owned by private enterprises, they'd charge you an "inactivity fee" if you never went through a tollway or something. I can't remember if you had to pay an admin fee or your credit had an expiry time, but either way you lost out if you didn't use a tollway regularly.

Mods: Above + extractors, high flow cats, modified intake plenum runners, increased redline, retuned Unichip Power: 195rwkW

Best part is that its not a problem "of the Skyline", since the next GT-R isn't one. The cost of entry will stop a lot of people from buying them as a mid-lifer's car. Sure you get that problem with entry-level Carreras, but then those people could have afforded to buy a grey import R34 GT-R when they came out as well so the worldwide "white import" won't affect its status that much. The softening of the GT-R, to compete with the 911, is a worry. But if the rumours are accurate and there's going to be different variants, the Evolution version (which will be the lightweight "track prepped" one) will still be the car people lust over, and it'll have the balls to back up its reputation. Just like the M3 has, over the years, softened itself out from the original E30 and turned itself into a luxury express I think the GT-R will still have a variant good enough to deserve the moniker. BMW has the CSL, Nissan will have the Evolution.

I've got one of the new G-Tech SS' and its quite good. I find it reasonably accurate (G-Tech time vs stopwatch time), but I mainly use it to measure lateral G's. I'm up to 1.23G's on 17" RT215s, and 1.29Gs on 18" D02G's.

Cars currently available for sale that I'd love to see on Australian roads: JDM Honda Civic Type-R JDM Honda Integra Type-R Caterham Superlight and CSR Vauxhall VX220 (Turbo) Pontiac Solstice Nissan Skyline (V35 and V36) Ford Mustang Dodge Charger SRT8

Were you rescued off an island in the South Pacific last week or something? I've got a news flash for you, we're not in a war and we haven't been in one for over half a century. People not getting over things is why racism occurs. Soon after the war, Aussies refused to buy Japanese made goods because of the mentality. The fact that the Corolla has outsold the Commodore shows that some of us have moved on, and aren't being racist about it. I'd go out on a limb and say that anyone posting in this thread wouldn't have participated in said war, where they may have once used the word in a racist context while trying to shoot someone calling them a "white devil" (which, of course, is not racist since its being said by an Asian).

Its not bigoted and racist, since the derisive context is not there. What can I say? I was rendered dumb when my brain had to step down to match the inanity of your words, and it took a while before I could step back up to normal brain function.

I had this conversation with someone on another forum a few months back. "As far as you're concerned" does not necessarily equal reality, I'm afraid to say. Its merely your opinion. And you could be wrong. "Jap" is a quite obvious truncation of "Japanese". "Aussie" is an abbreviation of Australian, but if someone called us that I can't see them going apeshit over it. We refer to all Americans as Yanks, which would deeply offend members of the South that fought the Yankees in their civil war. When you hear some ethnic people refer to anglo saxon males as "skips" or when you hear Jeremy Clarskon and James may refer to us as the "colonials" its pretty racist, but nary a bad word is said. Lets not even get into Russell Peters' popularity, as an Indian comedian making some pretty racist comments. You don't see people blowing up when its reverse racism and other races are having a go at white people (as an aside I'm Asian, so its not some "white power" thing either). Its racism and its hypocritical. Since the country's name is more closely pronounced as "Nippon" or "Nihon"...refering to them as "Japanese" rather than "Nipponese" / "Nihonese" could just as easily be construed as pushing Western imperialism upon the Asian nation by propagating the deliberate mispronounciation of their name. Doesn't that sound racist too? Where's your bleeding heart against the geographers of the world? Racism is a matter of context and intent. Were the commentators trying to put the Nipponese down with their comments? I don't have the full context since I didn't see the telecast, but from what you quoted it sounds quite the opposite. The comments sound like healthy competition (not superiority, since they're acknowledging that they're the challenger and the Nihonese are the champions), and the term used to refer to their competitor follows the Australian cultural tradition of abbreviating words. It wasn't used in a pejorative manner (like the way soldiers used Gook, Nip, Chink, etc during the war to refer to people they were trying to kill, and were trying to kill them). You say it gets under your skin, and its racist as far as you're concerned. Yet I didn't even pick it up as being potentially racist until someone (and a non-Asian at that) brought it up, and I'd forgotten about it until you mentioned it again. Sounds like you're the one obsessed with race. To me, they're just people who happen to live on a different island.

Uh........what? We'd like to "take it to the Japs" because they're the best. The Aussies are still acknowledging that the Japanese are still the best drifters around with that statement. Where's the bigotry? Is it racism if you say people from a certain race are superior to you in something? Technically yes, but its not derogatroy. If I say black guys all have huge wangs, I wonder how many of them I'm going to offend? And ego is probably one of the most important traits in a competitor. If you don't know that you can win and go out there and give it 100% with that sublime self confidence, you're not going to win in a close competition. Sure, the top tier sportspeople (like in F1, or whatever football code you follow) will try and play down their arrogance since its bad PR, but if you look they all back themselves as Number 1. Travelling at 320km/hr+ down a straight to pass someone under brakes going into a hairpin doesn't leave much room for hesitation. Just because you're not racing F1 or competing in a telecast level doesn't mean you can't have the mindset.

My photos are up: http://www.au-z.org/gallery/circuitclub_20070611_wakefield

How does it handle? All the reviews I've read compare it unfavourably to a boat, regardless of the series. I've ridden in the previous generation Camry Altise Sport (same as the Sportivo aside from the seats and bodykit, so second from top of the line) and its got relatively good body control while having an excellent ride. I've driven an entry model 4 banger Camry and I was scared that anyone could buy a new car that handled that badly in this century, but the Sportivo (which is in Maxima price range) would be a car I'd buy....if I were ever willing to be seen dead owning a Camry.