scathing

have a little faith!!! Fuga, Stagea, Cima and President are not exactly competive comparisons to a GTR sports car. Our luxery market is saturated and basicly controlled by the 2 locals here. It still doesn't explain why the J31 Maxima is brought in instead of the V35 Skyline though. The relative failure of the LWB locals (Fairlane is dead, Statesman is only surviving due to exports) which would rule out the Cima and President, but it doesn't explain the Skyline. Australians have an affinity to cars that push, not pull, so you'd think the RWD Skyline would do a far better job of selling than the FWD Maxima. The engine's the same, the exterior is almost the same, the interior is about as luxurious, and they could improve their economies of scale on spare parts and mechanics training since it shares the same underpinnings as the 350Z. With all those plusses, you'd think it was a "no-brainer" that they'd pick up the driver's car over the bum dragger.

It was also priced that stupendously high because of the homologation costs.

Its not Hi Fi. But it does sound significantly better than popping in to a Bing Lee and finding an all-in-one unit that has more flashy lights and tacky bodywork than an Autosalon competitor.

I used to own a Marantz setup. I like my music and so I didn't want to buy some shitty Japanese mini system, but at the same time I couldn't (and wouldn't want to) spend the big dollars. I just tried that rig out to see if it was that good. I'd still rather spend the $50,000 that setup cost on a car. And that setup wasn't even using the top-of-the-line components offered by the store.

A few years ago I had a listen to an awesome hi-fi system at a store. It was amazing (I heard instruments in some songs on a CD I took with me that I'd never heard before), but the setup cost about as much as my car.

Krell?

So you're saying the RB20 makes a better dyno queen engine due to its higher peak power figure (I assume that's how you compared them "the other night"), but the SR is a more drivable engine due to its response. Case closed.

Only a maybe at this point.

You asked ns.com members, didn't you? Seriously, most of them are retards. An RB20 is a only a better option if you want to sound faster than you go, or you can't afford to put an SR in.

That's beerbaron's point exactly. It does OK, it doesn't do well. Considering how long surfing's been around for, and the Australian "beach culture" mindset, you'd think it would do a lot better. But its still nowhere near rugby union's status (which is, lets face it, a snobby "private school" game) let alone league or AFL. Or V8 Supercars. Or, as a more direct comparison, even swimming. I'm with beerbaron on this. I love watching drifting and going for a bit of a skid occasionally (on the track or skidpan only, of course), but for me its a side show to motor racing. Drifting is something drivers do to have fun and blow off some steam; racing is what they do when they get serious. As an analogy, look at basketball. You've got the Harlem Globetrotters doing all their cool moves when they do their demonstration games, or the dunking comps. But they're half time antics. When they're finished arsing about, the players go back to a game that has an objective method of calculating a winner.

He's not. Those people who buy locally made Mitsubishis, or Toyotas, pretty much don't count. I'm not being bigoted. Have a look at Toyota's range. There isn't one sports car in it anymore. And the last two they brought into the country were half baked (the flappy-paddle only MR2 and the "lets engineer a gearset that drops me off VVTi" Celica). Its almost the same for Mitsubishi - the locally made car isn't remotely sporty and, at last check, it tanked when it went to market. They do have the Evo in the mix, which is an awesome car, but not that common and so its owner base doesn't have the numbers either. So the vast majority of Toyota and Aussie-made Mitsubishi owners look upon their cars as an appliance. There's no love - its just a tool. And that means they're not going to be interested in motorsport. And given that neither company has a car that's near-ready for drifting, relatively speaking it'll cost them a lot more to prep a competitive car. That's a big risk for the marketing men who knows their brands trade off being cardigan cars. If you're parochial enough to only buy an "Australian made performance car", you're a Holden man or a Ford man. By all accounts Robbie Bulger running the ute, and then Monaro, as well as Ford's DRIF6, brought a few locals in to "support the brand" but attendance still isn't there. The only way I can see drifting picking up a lot of national coverage in a hurry is to get picked up as a support event at a V8 Supercar round, like the Elise and Porsche Cup races. But I can't see Ford / Holden ever permitting that. Porsche and Lotus aren't exactly competitors for Ford and Holden, but the Japanese manufacturers are. Since the vast majority of drift machines in Australia are Japanese-made, there's no way they'll permit them to muscle in on their mindshare. Otherwise, look at what happened to Procar. They had some hot exotica (Lambos, Viper, Ferraris, etc) which your average punter would consider aspirational in Nation's Cup, as well as "production cars" in GT-P that are similar to what said punters would actually drive, but they still got buried by the racing taxis.

Pics can be found on Circuit Club's page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/14095039@N00/...57600341328509/ and on JDM Style Tuning

Its probably what's held rallying back, too. It doesn't have that same clean precision that F1 does, and when you're standing in the forest in the middle of the night, during the snow season, sartorial elegance isn't quite as important as keeping your balls from getting frostbitten and falling off. And its not like they stick bins in the middle of the forest for you to throw your trash into. And the mechanics, having to prep a car that's bounced off a few trees and embankments, are too busy trying to get the car running before the next stage starts to worry about being neat and tidy. Forget that its a motorsport that requires a great deal of driver skill and bravery, and to a certain extent is more comparable to the kind of driving your average punter does (in terms of approaching blind corners with an unpredictable surface, without plenty of runoff), they just don't care if it doesn't look shiny. If people want to see something pretty, they should go to a fashion parade. If they actually want to see good driving and competition, they shouldn't be noticing what's happening off the course. If they are getting distracted from the action, then clearly they're not interested enough in what's happening on the course. That means either the competitors are not driving well enough, or they're not actually into the sport.

Its definitely worth it. Streetable tyres can't handle the stress of the track (even the semi-slick patterned tyres like Federal 595s or Falken Azenis RT range won't hold up, they'll just last a bit longer than your average street tyre) and R Comps are sphincter-tightening in inclement weather. My D02Gs only went greasy at the end of the day, and only in the last 2 laps, when the temperatures picked up and I started pushing harder and harder as I battled with cars at about my pace and pushed myself closer to my limits.

Exactly. Hornsby Nissan had a massive GT-R logo on their lot up until a few years ago. And has Carlos Ghosn retracted his announcement that the GT-R was getting sold as a Nissan everywhere? Especially after he basically told Infiniti dealers in the US (the only current market for the Infiniti brand) to shut their pie holes when the announcement was made? Sounds like the same kind of bullshit as the V6 Corolla.

Silver 350Z.

...........so much for timing. I had a good day. Hand timed by a passenger in one session at 1:12, which is about what I was aiming for without carrying ballast.....I mean mates. Glad to be back in Sydney though. I think my bollocks have only just thawed.

The current RS (which we don't get down under) is a much quicker car....on the track. Top Gear did a review (its probably on YouTube) and apparently it torque steers like nothing else...but then it was also Jeremy Clarkson who reviewed it and sometimes he's a little out of touch with reality. The old one, from the reviews I've read in UK mags, was quicker in the wet around a track than an Impreza WRX (non STi) even though it was FWD. The RenaultSport Clio and Astra SRi Turbo have both, in their days, won the Australian mainstream performance car magazine's (Motor Magazine) Bang For Your Buck awards. Both are more "fun" and quicker than the Focus ST by all accounts, but apparently the ST is better overall vehicle (its not as responsive or quick but its far more stable and comfortable).

Lets arrange our own cruise where anyone but Skylines can come.

You're kidding, right? The idiot did 200km/hr down a busy f**king street, weaving through traffic. That's not just "youthful excess". That's f**king stupid. I don't think that you can be harsh enough on someone who's apparently mature, and wilfully chooses to endanger other people's lives like that. Yeah I've done some pretty big speeds before, and some of it on public roads, as have quite a few of us, but even in my most foolish days I wouldn't do it in a populated area with bystanders around. Even if you're a sociopath who doesn't give a flying f**k about the lives of other people, you can replace the word "bystanders" with "witnesses" and you've just put your ability to drive at risk. Doing over double the speed limit is sure to get someone calling the cops and reporting you, which means you get shat on by the legal system and have them take your license away from you. If he's "still growing up" rather than "having grown up", then maybe he shouldn't be driving until he gets out of the former and into the latter.

That's the spin-doctor, sugar-coated reason for public consumption. In reality, its more profiteering. The policy states that your insurance is null and void "If the driver of your car was not licensed or authorised to drive it" (in the case of Just Car). Now, these policy documents are freely available on the Internet for you to peruse before you sign up so there can't be any claims of misleading information before the P plater signed up. Since they're not authorised to drive it, it means should they crash in their home town (and by rego laws the car has to be in their state of residence for the vast majority of the year) they don't have to cover it. That means the premium the insurance money gets is practically risk-free money. They'll have to cover damage-while-unattended and theft on a Comprehensive policy, but that's it. They don't even have to pay out CTP, since it also has the same clauses. As we all know, insurance companies are the first to take your money and the last to give it back. So of course they'll offer to cover practically anyone (and I'm sure the customer service pleb on the phone will mention "subject to the terms in our PDS / Policy documentation") and take their premium.....but just wait until they have to go around trying to make a claim.

Yeah, but you won't kill them in that situation. On a modern car, with its pedestrian impact design, there's a good chance you won't even break their legs.

He can still drive cars with hand controls (like some Falcodores). Cutting off both his hands, however......

Try searching. This topic gets covered ad nauseum on Skyline and Silvia forums. But, SR20DET > RB20DET. More midrange, lighter, and power potential. The only thing the RB does better is in the noise department. And even if they make the same rwhp they won't run the same quarter, since the Silvia is a lighter car. But there's a reason why CA18 equipped Silvias put SRs in them unless they can't afford anything other than an RB20.

You guys need the Euro hot hatches then. RenaultSport Clio or Megane, Ford Focus RS, Honda Civic Type-R, GM's Astra SRi Turbo and VXR, Volkswagen Golf GTi and R32, etc. There has never been a better time to be in the market for a hot hatch than right now. I would have thought that the Euros would have tried to bring some of these vehicles in.