V35-2005

unfortunately the government will never spend any money on providing advanced driving courses (or any driving courses) to anyone for free. the reality is that a lot of people buy performance cars but don't bother to get the training to learn what their cars can/can't do. if you buy a high performance car, you should do a high performance driving course to learn more about it. fairly simple concept imho, but most people won't pay to do it. from my observations, even if an advanced car driving course if offered, not many will take the opportunity to do it. evidence = 9 people at the recent Advanced Driving Course at Mallala two weeks ago

let a dark silver 350GT sedan drive past me on Holbrooks Rd an hour and a half ago - was surprised to see that it was a Series2 like mine (by the tail lights) same colour, front bar, etc. CC premium plates with a blonde lass driving it. is kinda strange seeing your own car drive by! would have been weirder if i was actually in the V35 (was driving my other car at the time)

there's nothing wrong with the Level 1 defensive driving courses at AIR - I've done one and went straight to a Level 2B high performance course two days later at Mallala. the Advanced Course sits in between the two (hence Level 2A) and has elements of both types of event. as the guys who attended on Monday will attest, it sets you up nicely for the future High Performance Level 2B course. I strongly encourage people to do a defensive driving course before doing any sort of trackday (like the SAU trackday or other open trackdays).

High Performance Drive Day = Level 2B course = November 22 (Monday) mark it in your diary! it's five months from now, so no one should have the excuse of not being able to book some time off or get their car ready for it. the official thread will be launched soon and i'll have the enrolment forms ready to go then. this day will fill up fast as plenty of people have done the course before and want to do it again. unfortunately, unless i have an avalanche of people asking for the Advanced Driving Course from here on, it is unlikely that I will be organising another one in the foreseeable future (ie the next couple of years) unless the demand is there. booking Mallala for a whole day and getting only nine cars out there (from three forums) simply isn't economically viable for us.

you shouldn't need extra fuel as you won't be going flat out round and round all day like the other trackdays. you won't need tools, ramps, etc unless you're planning to break your car tomorrow. full tank of fuel, comfortable clothing and (driving) shoes should be all that you need. take all loose objects out of your car beforehand (and check under the seats) so that crap doesn't roll out and fly out when you're on the track. check your tire pressures (cold) tonight or first thing tomorrow. set at 36-38psi cold for 17-18" street tires. we like to start at 0830am sharp so make sure that you get to Mallala by 8am. a few of the instructors will be there from 8am. stop mucking around with your cars now and make sure that you get a good night's sleep!

That's a bit early guys! You should aim to get there by 8am. Caltex is only 30min from Mallala so have 30min extra sleep instead

sorry to hear that you can't make this bloody V35 owners! (not mine!) looks like it's just: Sparkys, GoAhead, niksta, Mark (heslo's mate), and maybe ev33.

Nightcrawler has reminded me in another thread that there aren't too many V35's in SA ... so how many active owners do we really have ? rollcall ! (Andrew does this thread belong in the V series or the SA section?)

while Nightcrawler may not have the best opinion of Sinergy Motorsports (perhaps only from the carsale side of things, no disrespect intended) my recommendation would be Sinergy as they have had lots of experience importing and servicing V35's over the years (including mine). otherwise a number of my Zed owning friends have been going to Unley Nissan from new. both have the VQ35 so really either location will be fine for general servicing

last chance guys. we won't be putting this course on next year

two weeks to go. is anyone else interested in this?

two and a half weeks to go - i still have a handful of spots available. PM me or Luke for the enrolment form.

it was wet last year (i remember trudging through the mud across the circuit!) and i think that the rain made it more challenging on the day in terms of other cars, the list will open to the other clubs as of tomorrow. the SA Supra Club will be fielding at least five cars for this. so at this stage, i have a few spots available

preferably this or some other defensive driving course. will be fine if you've been out on the track before (open days / motorkhana events) or have lots of experience in the hills. Luke (heslo) can let u know what level of experience they want. we just want to make sure that there are no complete noobs on the High Performance Course who will wipe the rest of us out by pulling some madd skidz at the wrong time - the HP course is less structured and aims to give u as much track time as possible for club sprint type of events

Three and a half weeks to go! Thanks to all those who have signed up so far. Despite the low numbers we will press on with staging the event. However, there has been a disappointing response from across the forums for this sort of course so i don't think that we can justify putting it on again next year / the foreseeable future. We will still be offering the step up High Performance Course in November (twice yearly event) so it will be great to see people out at that one.

"they resprayed all their cars when they came in" implies to most readers of this thread that all of Sinergy's cars are dodgy and require a full respray... kinda like saying they have been sitting in a salt mine. that is considerably different from respraying "minor scratches or dings that would normally occur on the shipping process" good to see that you clarified your point. cheers

and knowing Rocco personally, i know that not be true. why would a sales guy make a statement that would jeopardise his sales? this thread has the potential to go sour very soon.

That's a pretty big call... And that's an even bigger allegation... There are plenty of threads here on SAU about importing vs buying from a yard but everyone's personal experiences will vary. I'm sure that there will be plenty of people who have had good and bad experiences with [insert name of whichever import yard]. It's unlikely that any import yard will have an R34 GTR just sitting on the lot. If you want to specifically import one, then a good importer should be able to give you plenty of info and photos at every stage along the way. That's what i would expect anyway. I got my V35 from Sinergy in perfect condition (it was a specific order) and it hasn't skipped a beat. No complaints from me about their sales or service after many years *shrugs*

I would normally need a minimum of 20 drivers to make the event happen, but as we have booked Mallala out for the day, we are committed to running this and will have make up the numbers with other car clubs (Porsche Club of SA, WRX SA, FPV etc), so rest assured that we are still going ahead with the event. Luke - thanks for the additional two.

less than a month to go and i have a whopping three confirmed entries from SAU (Sparkys, GoAhead, niksta) what's going here?

no, i don't know yet, but i will catch up with Dean from John Bowe Driving early next week to go over the list of participants and update the list accordingly.

absolutely no problem at all with bringing a non-Skyline along to this as long as the car you have is roadworthy. people often have last minute changes as well all know that things break! the list is looking pretty sparse at the moment: * GoAhead (form sent) * niksta (form sent) * Sparkys (form sent) x Normsta x Cheddar x JSTA33 ? RBJETT ? SXY 33 ? dark.sky ? ozyk ? Ripp3r (didn't u do this course last year?) will be hard to justify offering this sort of driving course again next year if the overall interest is low...

two weeks left to enroll for this guys.

uh... the title of this thread is Advanced Driving Course. if you read page 3 of the pdf, it states "This course will help you progress safely to a top level John Bowe Driving High Performance course or club track event" perhaps you're misinterpreting "it is a requirement that participants have completed a defensive or advanced course prior to attending our High Performance course. This ‘Car Club Performance Drive Day’ meets & exceeds this experience requirement." ----- the statement refers to this Advanced Driving Course (June 21) being a prerequisite for later the High Performance course (November). hope that this clears up any confusion.

full payment for the trackday is due May 31 so you have some time left. no spectators for this one, but probably better photo opportunities at the next SAU trackday or at the next High Performance Driving course that i'm running in November (if you want to be the SAU photographer for that day).