Oz Vs. Japs

[Falcon XR6T]

Just wondering where Australian cars sit on the scale these days, e.g XR6 Turbo, HSV Clubsport etc. against the mighty Jap road warriors. As some of you may know, the XR6T, XR8 and HSV clubsports etc. are very cheap and easy to modify compared to some highly priced Japanese cars that are diffcult to get parts for. So in a competition of bang for your bucks I'm wondering if Australia has finally pulled away from the Japs with cheap modifications with huge gains, another plus is the insurance isn't high, cars such as the XR6T are very fuel economic compared to a rotary (such as Japan's mighty RX7), and is still capable of taking friends and family around with plenty of room. Has Australia finally overtaken the Japs after their defeat at Bathurst? Have your say...

[Cubes]

They are two different cars.

Jap cars are little sport cars that have been overengineered.

Aussy cars are performance sedans.

At this very time in mylife (Uni) I prefer the little jap car.

1. Initial purchase price is cheap.

2. Very reliable due to thier overengineering.

3. Parts dirty cheap ($400 for a gearbox, $300 for a diff, 600 for a motor, $200 for a turbo, $63 for aftermarket clutch master, $40 for aftermarket slave cyl etc).

4. Insurance is cheap for a turbo car with many mods. I pay $600 per year.

Insurance you will find is the same as a performance sedan.

Grab a quote on a XR6 EL, XR8 EL or SS and you will find the price is the same as an equally valued Jap import.

Grab a plain old V8 Commodore or V8 Ford and the insurance is only then dirt cheap.

I did however vote for the aussy cars as Ford impressed me with their go at a performance vehicle.

The XR6T DOHC 4ltr with its big gt35 huffer is an awesome car with a tonne or TWO (no pun intended) of potential. hehe

Holden... Well.. They have always opted to use motors from other manufactures. So no points there. But they do go fast and do look smooth.

Ford wins my vote. They look nice and have a better build quality than the Holden. Just need to sort out those diff's, gearbox's and clutches.

But thats R&D.. Being an australian car designed for the small Australian public they are unable to spend as much on R&D as the jap company's who have a massive market.

[Falcon XR6T]

They are two different cars.

Jap cars are little sport cars that have been overengineered.

Aussy cars are performance sedans.

At this very time in mylife (Uni) I prefer the little jap car.

1. Initial purchase price is cheap.

2. Very reliable due to thier overengineering.

3. Parts dirty cheap ($400 for a gearbox, $300 for a diff, 600 for a motor, $200 for a turbo, $63 for aftermarket clutch master, $40 for aftermarket slave cyl etc).

4. Insurance is cheap for a turbo car with many mods. I pay $600 per year.

Insurance you will find is the same as a performance sedan.

Grab a quote on a XR6 EL, XR8 EL or SS and you will find the price is the same as an equally valued Jap import.

Grab a plain old V8 Commodore or V8 Ford and the insurance is only then dirt cheap.

I did however vote for the aussy cars as Ford impressed me with their go at a performance vehicle.

The XR6T is an awesome car with a tonne or TWO (no pun intended) of potential. hehe

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Great points there and I know they are different cars for different people which makes it hard for me to start the topic but I'm just trying to compare them bang for your bucks, I'm not really aiming at the older market such as EL etc. I'm more aiming at the (Ford/FPV: BA and up) and (Holden/HSV: VT and above). So thanks for your reply, just letting everyone know that I'm just seeing where Australia WEIGHS up against the Japs, lol.

[Falcon XR6T]

OK lets get this thing going, now I happen to think that the new BA Falcon XR range looks aggressive as, as does the VY and VZ Holden range, I know Skylines do too but (firstly) I want to know how many of you prefer the look of the BA XR range to any of the GTR's ever made.

[Sambo33]

i vote jap cars, but thats my personal preference. i appreciate what holden/ford are doing, but its just not for me.

[predator]

you really are only talking about 1 car, that being the XR6 Turbo.. most of the other natural aspirated aussie cars require a bit of money to raise the performance above the standard specifications.. other that extra 20% via an exhaust, filter, and possibly a basic chip soltution. Just as an example, none of the reasonable brand exhaust systems for an Australian car seem to be that cheap.

Each generation of aussie car, yes, gets more and more power, but they also get heavier and heavier - which often balances out the power gains.

From what i have seen, proper modified parts to modify a newish Ford or Holden are quite expensive. Be it a supercharger kit, haltech, autronic etc engine ecu.. or anything like that to really give it a big boost.

Maybe in 10 years when the latest BA are $10k, but at the moment, they still are more expensive (base cost, then your mods) than your cheap jap car... thats why you see so many out there.

Also you have to remember, with so many interchangeable parts out there for some 10 years of RB and SR engines there is a lot of 2nd hand stuff out there to use.. not everybody uses brand new parts. Yes you can scoff at that, but many nissan owners are a tightass bunch

The whole performance thing people are getting a little bored of anyway in some ways, going by the amount of imports forsale these days. Performance just isn't as desireable. Could be petrol costs. Could be increase police enforcement. Could be the cars getting older. Multitude of things.

[_IrIsH_]

one thing that u have to rememeber is that look at the age of all these jap cars.

im sure for eg the 34gtr will be mentioned and look how old that is

also will be interestd to see how the new awd sys will go with the holden and fords.

just read a good writeup aobut that coupe4 in wheels. they say its pretty good apart from a few minors.

you would think that the gap my be bridged eventually, but at the end of the day it comes to what u want, the money u want/can spend.

and also a problem for the Aus. manufacturors is that the Japs have got slightly more money to perfect and develope their products.

[Cubes]

None of the Fords or Holdens in my eyes look as awesome as a GTR.

The pumped guards with a nice set of wide tyres looks absolutely awesome. Much more aggressive than any of the AUS cars.

The reason I compared the older models of Aussy cars is because the Skylines are an older car.

[Falcon XR6T]

Yes I am really only solely talking about an XR6T but have included other Australian manufacturers for the Holden/HSV lovers, hence an Australia against Japan subheading, to tell you the truth I'm not the greatest fan of V8's because I think they are overated an are all bark and no bite. For example, I think if you chuck an XR6T amongst the V8 Supercars with the same extent of modifications they have, the XR6T would rip the V8 a new exhaust hole. So it's not really about stereotype Aussie V8's against little turbocharged Jap cars. Because I think the XR6T is the best family Australian and Performance car ever made I want to put it to the test against legendary Japanese cars such as the Skyline and Evo, I have the specs now all I wan't to hear are the opinions.

[Cubes]

Your 11.746 pass is awesome for 253rwkw.

What tyres was that run on?

[hungry6]

I don't find the Ford that attractive although clean, Ford have been engaging in reverse engineering for a little while now, but still achieves good results. As for HSV/Holden, the car looks nice initially but then fails to deliver. On engineering refinement, ford and holden has along way to go and they still haven't address the weight issues,

or have anything in the pipeline to do so. Where as the japanese are daylights ahead. As for ease of modification, and availabilty of parts. I would like to see you source a s/c for an ls1 in nagasaki, but u can easily get a turbo(s) for most jap model world wide.

To me the world car manufacturing reach a cross road about 12 years ago, and the Australian manufacturer went down one path, and the rest of the world went down another.

[Falcon XR6T]

Your 11.746 pass is awesome for 253rwkw.

What tyres was that run on?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I borrowed my mates slicks, the run was at A.I.R.

[rob82]

Who tuned your car XR6T? And at what boost, what are you mods? Valve springs and injectors I'm guessing?

[Al 2]

If you are talking value for money, in terms of performance, i will still most definately buy a Jap car. I made this decision 4yrs ago and my resolve has only gotten stronger.

How can Austalia's best attempt at a performance car, whether it be Holden or Ford, even compete with Japan's 15yr old R32 GTR.

At today's prices you are looking at about $70k for either Holden's or Ford's best car (if not more). To buy a great condition R32 GTR, fully modified, yet still street drivable, the most you would pay would probably be about $45k. And believe me, $45k is considered very high for a R32 GTR, so the car would have to be mint and HIGHLY modified.

Last i looked, XR6t were not so cheap to modify. The ecu is very smart and only a couple of aftermarket piggy-backs are available. The g/box is also considered to be weak, and other issues also have to be overcome.

On another note; i truely beleive the build quality of the Aus cars leaves much to be desired. They aren't as bad as the US though.

Just some of my background:

I still love going to the SummerNats, almost every year. I also attend most Ford days, in Geelong, and appreciate the level of work and performance ppl have done to their car's. Basically i am not a "Jap is best because i own one" person

[FATAZZ]

best holdens use nissan or chev engines.

xr6 turbo's are new,ill beat one with half the engine capacity and spending money plus look good while doing it.

[sl33ek]

The XR6 turbo is the only Australian made car that I really liked. Its the way ford and holden should be going years ago, making a turbo variant of their cars instead of making their engines bigger and bigger.

For me its Japanese all the way. They just have a passion for tuning, and engineering to get the most out of the available high tech engines. Look at the japanese car racing series, its called the JGTC I think compared to Australia's equivalent. I still laugh when I watch V8 supercars on a sunday arvo knowing that a japanese 2.5L JGTC car can run laps around these 5L tanks.

Australia only has two well known tuning houses, HSV and FPV. Japan has a whole array inlcuding the amazing Nismo amongst the big hitters like HKS, APEXi just to name a few. That shows that they are light years ahead of what Australia can offer and they have a true passion for cars and how they should be.

JDM for me

[SDEWY5]

^^^^^^^^^^

What he said

Dunno, opinions are very biased though, just comes down to what you really like most. But consider the sheer number of legendary Japanese performance cars to that of holden and ford... thats a huge ass ratio...

kudos on the 11 sec pass, thats fassst, struggle to get that in a GTS skyline with even more power.

[Cubes]

A GTST with slicks, 5speed and ~300rwkw runs a low 11sec 1/4.

Unsure what sort of power is needed for a high 11sec.

[Falcon XR6T]

Who tuned your car XR6T?  And at what boost, what are you mods?  Valve springs and injectors I'm guessing?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Graham West Workshops did my XR6T, it's all part of an MRT performance package.

[merlin6014]

This is easy - well what i reckon anyway!

You can't beat the current crop of aussie machines for Bang for Your Buck (except for Subaru with the WRX)

Japan has dropped many of its performance cars - no more 200sx ect. In fact I find it hard to even think of any new Jap turbo "performance" cars sold here depite the WRX.

The younger generation coming through are going to be driving these aussie cars as jap imports start get too old.

Having said all that although the Aussie stuff offers absolutley terrific bang for your buck it still cant match (infact gets NO WHERE NEAR) the quality/reliabilty of the jap stuff.

I bought a new BA XR6 new and have since sold it - it was a great car but had a few quality issues unheard of in jap cars - nothing major but enough for you to get annoyed.

Insurnace is a no brainer - 200sx = $4000 a year, XR6Turbo = $900 per year.

All i can say is that if the aussies increase their quality control they will be on to a winner.