Today Tonight- I Sent A Email Regarding The Car Scene....

[NZM.031]

im with him

why is it though.... that there are no mg club hoons?? or porsche hoons??

[Kujotk]

*note to self: find out where he lives and go do burnouts on his lawn, that will show him in not a hoon.

i'm on the case... but burnouts would get him angrier, better just round up his lawn and plants..... maybe brake fluid on his car lol

[Kujotk]

im with him

why is it though.... that there are no mg club hoons?? or porsche hoons??

no porsche hoons??? lol

I should video tape the real estate agent MORGAN from a realty in the hills area. He's got something like 4 911's with number plates MORGAN and similar and he absolutely drives the cars like a co*k sucker on the streets around rouse hill, kellyvile and castle hill. Swerving in and out of traffic really thrashing the cars and always doing way over the speed limmits even during school zones that dont have cameras....

He's always in for a drag at every opportunity in his stock standard gt2 and he seems to not be a hoon in ACA and TT's eyes. Yet responsible drivers like myself are constantly pulled over, harrassed and get the pinky fingure every time i change gears the blow off valve sneezes (for christ sake it sneezes every time i change gears, stupid ignorant public, car doesnt need to be going fast to sneeze loud)

so sick of everyone who has no idea and points fingures at everyone else except them selves.

We should invite an independent like 60 minutes or abc to do a proper factual story. Yes there will be scenes of drifting and you tube footage thrown in, but atleast it would be more likely to be the truth. they should be invited to a decent cruise where everyone is in their best behaviour, shows us talking together, taking our friends and families on a cruise. have lunch. I can see 60minutes and abc doing a fairly unbiassed report, meaning they will both definately refer to the hoons and the enthousists in the same story, but would not call us hoons because they have discussion boards and feed back from the public (us) that can publicly correct anything wrong or out of context that they may say....

if they could do a fairly unbiassed report on the KKK i'm sure we should be fine aslong as we dont give them any reason to say otherwise.

[Kujotk]

Ok, this was an idea that came to mind so I can see the flamming coming but hey some honest opinions wouldnt go astray.

Why dont they just introduce a law along the lines of the current gun laws. For example, anyone owning a performance vehicle needs to be registered with an active enthusiast car club and be an active member, meaning they need to attend one event a year or so on. The vehicles number plate would be able to be refered to the car club the driver associates with. This would make the hoons easily identifiable to the members of that car club and would give police a referance to use to find the actual offenders.

Now there would be alot more to it than what I have stated above obviously but I guess the picture that needs to be painted doesnt need to be painted so much by the media as it does by the "hoons" fellow ethusiasts. Most of the dickheads out there acting and driving like morons need to realise that the vast majority of car ethusiasts think there a bunch of cock knockers.

I guess overall what im trying to say is something needs to be done to remove the cliche term of a "hoon" away from enthusiasts and towards the particular people that are infact hoons. By owners being associated with car clubs this may bring more attention towards the good things the car clubs are doing and seperate the hoons from the enthusiats or atleast making the hoons vulnerable to being pointed out. Majority of key offender are not car enthusiasts they are morons driving cars they beleive to be performance cars and or have purchased a performance car not out of respect for what the car is but to show off and dance around going look how f**king cool Iam. Eradicate those people from being allowed to drive or put them in a position where other enthusiasts can tell them there a wanker and have the ability to report them and I believe it will take effect in due course. THIS will give US the chance to take action and make a good name for ourselves.

If you label one driver and his stupidity in place of labelling a majority and giving the public false impressions, its going to go a long way to solving the issue, as appose to what TT are doing and just making every non offending enthusiast pissed off and suffer conciquences both verbally and legally that they did not deserve to begin with.

yeah but then every tom dick and harry who likes to drive 10km/h under the speed limmit (or people who dont know what the speed limmit is in the area), got cut off unintentionally for one reason or another, or just a winger in general can say anything about someones driving and the police will look down on them for no reason, fellow car club peers will look down on them for giving the club a bad name, even if the person in question never really did anything wrong....

an ex gf or a neighbour who youve had an argument with will harrass you by saying your a hoon and detroying your hobby of owning a skyline....

[zZzDanzZz]

its so gay how these hoon laws are now exactly the same as the witch hunt shit in america back in the 1600-1700s.

oh no, shes a witch, burn her, f**ked if she is a good person and all.

SAU, being one of the largest car clubs in australia can do a lot for the car enthusiast's image, and we have a lot of mature members who the public are more likely to listen to, rather then block their ears and sing

[Kujotk]

its so gay how these hoon laws are now exactly the same as the witch hunt shit in america back in the 1600-1700s.

oh no, shes a witch, burn her, f**ked if she is a good person and all.

SAU, being one of the largest car clubs in australia can do a lot for the car enthusiast's image, and we have a lot of mature members who the public are more likely to listen to, rather then block their ears and sing

i think its important for sau to try and put our case forward, we do allot of good and sau is more of a community that an "auto cult". Especially since we publicly ridicule people on the site who post something up saying that they "went drifting on the roads in public" or say "they went draging some commonhore the other day".

Being one of the biggest and have a very broad age range ow club members I think we should take the first step for the rest of the other legit car clubs and make a reasoned and careful stand against hoons and try not to step on aca and tt's toes too much. aca and afiliates may not know what we in sau are about, they need to be educated so in the future they can be more fair.

If we sit back and do nothing who knows which way the wind will blow, we may even wrongfully get branded as hoons by sitting here talking about how dumb aca and tt are, but at the end of the day, they are only telling their story while we sit quiet and basically get persecuted.

SAU TV should be brought back in motion, and posted on youtube and other car club sites after we have thought about what exactly we are trying to do and who we are appealing to. Then after a few percentage points of the public find out what we are about, then we should approach the current affairs programs and say "hey, we are decent law abiding people, you shouldnt brand us as hoons, have a look at our videos, come to our events, meet our members and their families, we are peacefull and help rasie $1000's a year for various charities...."

[R33_Dude]

I may sound like yet another broken record being played in a room filled with broken record players - I essentially lost my licence about six months back for driving a skyline, if I had been in any other vehicle I am sure I would have received a warning instead of demerit loss.

The reason is that we have been tarred with the hoon brush for a reason. The guys doing one-legged burnouts in mcdonalds car parks are slowly migrating from their commodores to skylines due to simple economics - skylines are newer, cheaper, faster and are starting to get into full stride with depreciation. We should realise, pretty soon we will be driving the new VL Turbos. Sure its sad, but its born of market forces and lets face it the majority of skylines out there - *cough* R33's *cough* - are over fifteen years old, which is prime hoon ownership territory.

The minority have - as with most things nowadays - ruined it for the majority doing the right thing.

Is it possible to change this image? Well, yes. When was the last time you saw a 1930's all steel ford hotrod pulled over getting inspected (not that the officer would have to look hard for defects - the blower is hanging out of the bonnet)? Pretty much never and when you do they probably had it coming for doing something stupid. Forty years ago those cars were the hoons of the day, now they are works of automotive art and are appreciated as such. In the local newspaper after the last Targa Tasmania there was a big piece on how the Targa encourages hooning. Right next to it was a piece on the amazing cars at a local hot rod show. It is possible to change our public image, its just not easy. Today Tonight (and similar) are just symptoms of a problem in the automotive community that results in a public hatred of imports and modified cars.

The other day I was talking with some friends about racing - at the drag strip (I was lucky enough to have a go in a 10 second SR20DET powered escort owned by oone of my uncles) - and an old lady turned around and started berating us for being no better than those young hoons doing burnouts in her street on a friday night.

Idiots are the problem with the automotive community and you can't arrest them all - you couldn't build the cells fast enough.

In terms of "When are you going to grow up?": my father is a fifty five year old mechanical engineer. He builds cars essentially from scratch, travelling around to find all steel parts to build that next early hot rod. He builds the engines himself, does the suspension, chassis work and tuning himself. They have all been capable of mid 11's on the quarter mile and are driveable every day without a worry. His cars have been bought by television personalities from across the country. Is he still a child?

We can do a few things to help - ignore the criticism (its our hobby they can f*ck off) and respond when journalism over steps the line, represent ourselves well and fairly in the community, disassociate ourselves from the hoon population and where possible fight inappropriate charges in court (even though its futile a lot of the time, the few wins set precedents).

[bozodos]

Yeah I've noticed in the past week 5 new R33's last week here alone, several being driven by f**kwits who race up and down one of the 4 lane streets all night. One led the cops on a high speed chase over the river last week, and a couple of months ago, a wanker I knew in a R32 totaled it and nearly killed his girlfriend trying to drift on a public road. Not to hate on R33's unneccessarily, but they are the cheapest model to buy.

As one former VL driver told me, why bother with a VLT when an R33 is just as easy, costs similar money and has heaps of parts around? Kinda hard to seperate the enthusiasts from the hoons when for the average person it's hard to differenciate between the two. (Tasteless mods aside lol)

It's all well and good to say oh we should band together and unite under the club thing, but for those of us in rural areas, it's not viable is it? Unless there were a local chapter of the club.

Someone should try and get onto something like the 7.30 report to see if they would entertain the idea of even doing an article about import car enthusiasts in general, not just Skylines.

[Phantom32]

i've only read the last few pages, and i see some very, very good responses and emails have been written. I agree wtih most of what is said, however one ting does come to mind:

How many of us skyline owners here have illegal parts on their car? Even just something small, like a cooler + pod filter?

And how many of us have lost our license even just once? Its all good to say that the majority of us are law-abiding citizens on the road, and we as enthusiasts should be seen as different to the morons out there who buys skylines cos they are the next VLT, but our entire argument and point could be tarnished if either of the above two questions are asked.

I daresay 90% of us would not pass the pits or EPA.

just something to think about i guess. Even tho them rules are bullsh*t, those looking at us as hoons would simply use that as their main argument that we don't care for the rules and just modify our cars outside the legal limits, and hence if we're gonna do that then we would ignore the road rules too...

Sad, but unfortunately true.

[bozodos]

The same thing could be said about a lot of muscle and hot rod car owners though.

[jase-r34]

i've only read the last few pages, and i see some very, very good responses and emails have been written. I agree wtih most of what is said, however one ting does come to mind:

How many of us skyline owners here have illegal parts on their car? Even just something small, like a cooler + pod filter?

And how many of us have lost our license even just once? Its all good to say that the majority of us are law-abiding citizens on the road, and we as enthusiasts should be seen as different to the morons out there who buys skylines cos they are the next VLT, but our entire argument and point could be tarnished if either of the above two questions are asked.

I daresay 90% of us would not pass the pits or EPA.

just something to think about i guess. Even tho them rules are bullsh*t, those looking at us as hoons would simply use that as their main argument that we don't care for the rules and just modify our cars outside the legal limits, and hence if we're gonna do that then we would ignore the road rules too...

Sad, but unfortunately true.

What about a 2008 commodore with darker than legal window tint? Or some 45yo doctor buys a new Senator and loves some 19" rims that are outside legal specs? These are illegal modifications too. I daresay there is a large percentage of the population that are driving around in a defectable car.

Then there are the ones who know nothing about cars, don't modify their car, (and hate people that do) yet they are driving around on 2 tyres worn down to the canvas, brakes metal to metal or shocks that may as well not be there....the list goes on.

We can't be singled out as people driving 'illegal or non-roadworthy' cars, as most of the cars I have worked on have had some form of defect or unroadworthy problem on them.

I even heard a rumour once that brand new cars such as falcons were leaving the factory with numerous defectable items. Don't know how true that is though!

[zZzDanzZz]

our cars may have some "illegal mods" (deemed illegal by people who usually know nothing about cars) but they are still a lot safer than the "legal" cars with blown shocks, broken tail lights, cars that blow smoke like a steam train, and yet these cars are rarely booked.

i've upgraded my car's brakes to R33 GTST brakes, a mod that would be deemed illegal, but i have had a workshop check it out and they say the installation was top work, and is much much more effective and safer than what it came out of the factory with.

if SAU was to rally together with other legitimate car clubs, im sure the public would finally take notice

[SKLgodzilla]

I guess when come to this specific topic, IMO, ultimatly it comes down to the driver and their attitude. The relationship between havin mods in ur car and havin accidents bcos of that really is a vague topic... I ve swapped out my turbo for an aftermarket Apexi, full cat bak Borla exhaust + pod and i ve never being booked for speedin, parkin, red lights etc. and i have had no on road accidents...(except tat once i backed my car in to the neighbour's front gate....lol ...good excuse to get custom tail lights huh..?! lol)

so ultimatly its the minority few that give us the majority a bad name and car tunin industry a bad light... in the end its not the ride its the rider...

[Phantom32]

i totally agree 100% that there are a v.large number of the general public out there that drive around in unroadworthy and defectable cars - be they your Average Joe with a illegally tinted VT Commo, or Mrs Chan and her Toyota Camry with bald tyres and fried brakes. And yes, its bullshit that we get singled out even tho in most cases our cars can outhandle and out brake the majority of cars out there. I guess what i'm trying to say is that its all good and well for us to unite and make a stand, pointing out that its a few idiots that have given the rest of us a bad name - but all it would take for our argument to fall apart is for someone to lift our bonnets and point out a pod filter, cooler and/or boost controller. And us pointing out others with defectable cars won't hide the fact that we in fact are still 'wrong' with our 'illegal' modifications (even though 99% of the time the mods make our cars perform better rather than worse!)

It's bullshit that we do get singled out all the time and I for one would love for all the hating to stop, but, unfortunately, i don't think we can really change the viewpoints on our cars because the majority of times that they pull skylines/siliva/ supras over, they WILL find an illegal modification somewhere. Then we'll argue our point, they will argues theirs and we go full circle back to the beginning again.

Some things will just never change, but in saying that, i reckon SAU have done a fantastic job with their cruises, Charity Events, F1 involvement and countless other things to show to the public that we are in fact a car enthusiast club and not just a bunch of hoons.

Sadly, most ppl just miss the point.

[GTR-N1]

^^^ some good criteria!

May I say, that the Lead has to come FROM THE TOP!

Police musn't just uphold the law, they must adhere to the law and keep order in the community that they serve + be consistent.

Now Legally:- I see State Police in Australia as being sticklers for the law (compared to the corruption and graft in some places o'seas). But they also ping you for anything and everything they can. But who orders the Blitz? The Area Commander? The Deputy Superintendant? This goes right to the top!

And Morally:- And here lies the 'rub'... Police need to be constructive and be seen as unifying. It's so unfortunate to see their actions as being so divisive. Sure they cop sh/t on the street. Sure they need to arrest the same jerk 3X, 4X for the same crime because of a weak judiciary. But in their training at the academy, they also need to learn (or be taught) the art of negotiation.

Summary:- If police aren't learning how to negotiate better, they need to be taught. And if they aren't being taught, then someone AT THE TOP needs to build this into their curriculum!

My 2c. Tez

[GT-R32]

im with him

why is it though.... that there are no mg club hoons?? or porsche hoons??

Because MGs are slow cars. Not performance cars.

Porsche is a valid question, so is Ferrari or anything expensive and fast. Both are owned by people who like fast cars. For example, on ABC news here this week, following the 'AutoItalia' event where they showed Ferraris on the news, they showed one giving it a hit on the grass spinning the wheels violently like it was a good thing along with others revving engines. Would they show a Skyline doing that? Only in negative light, to be sure. The reason is society's pressure on this issue is aimed at a perceived lower status male which is a reflection of individuals as part of sexual selection who also seek to put down such males, 'hoons' are seen as just that, relatively cheap cars and young idiots - low status males.

[NZM.031]

mg's maybe slow cars... but its almost like a social status to be apart of the mg club.. and i saw them a week or 2 ago, doing motorkhana in a parking lot... now if i didnt know any better... id say it was a bunch of hoons racing around witches hats in a carpark... but because it was the mg car club.. its just them going about their business.

if that was skylines... then we'd be hoons, doing spinturns, smoking tyres, stopping quickly, accelerating quickly etc.

there are idiot drivers in every car.. just jap imports get noticed.. yet the same age european cars are exotics.. haha.

i think someone "at the top" as terry put it.. is a mad holden fan, and has never got over the whooping they recieved at bathurst and the fact that since forever ago, the japs have made a much better product than anything thats come from holden.

sometimes it gets me down.. sometimes i want to buy another car, so that i dont get judged or put in the same group as the idiots with their white trucker hats to the side, and big white sunnys, big chrome wheels, ghey exhaust and ghey as blow off valve.. but at the same time.. other performance cars in my price range are becoming attainable... evo's now in the low 20s, rexs starting at 15g, so the same thing will happen.. skylines used to be an enthusiasts car, not a ratbag car.

[SHZ350]

Well i added my part and decided to send the bloody fool an email to...here is what i said.........

Dear Graham, i am emailing to let you know that i am offended by the story you did classing people as "HOONS" i am a 25 year old mother of 1 who owns a 2003 Nissan Skyline 350gt, i use this car to take my daughter to school, shops, cruises, and just everyday trips and even though it is an imported car it does not mean that all people are "HOONS" yeah sure you get your fair deal of idiots out there but it is not the car that makes the hoon, it is the driver. My Husband also owns a 1991 Nissan Skyline GTR r32, it has been modified and played around with but that does not make him a hoon. If he wants to speed and be an idiot in it he will go to eastern creek and drag it, but in fact he takes it out like once a month and that is when we go for a cruise to wollongong.....him in his car and me in my car. but my point is that just because people drive imported, modified cars it does not mean they are a "HOON" i take great offence to being labeled a hoon because of the car i drive. Before i got my Skyline i was in a Proton Satria but i was not labelled a hoon then so why should i be now?

Sharon

[GT-R32]

Put it down to the grey brigade owning MGs. The last thing people like to see is young men obtaining any form of status or attempting to, especially when it involves a perceived risk (which is what men to do raise status). It's just a reflection of individual prejudice.

Good email Sharon.

[SHZ350]

Thanks GT-R32 , I'm so sick and tired of people judging by the car. when i told my mother what i had bought her first words were "Don't be bloody stupid you'll kill yourself" then she had a chat to my hubby to talk him out of it to. it's not the car that kills it's the driver and the speed they do. I could of easily sped in the proton and killed myself to. there are thousands of people who die in car accidents and most are not imports or as TT said "Hoons"