Some kind of Mishap

I wish I could understand Swedish. It did, however stop, and the auto-brake also turned the wipers on. I'm not sure if the truck comes as part of the package.

My Beaut Ute

It’s been clear for some time now that I need a Ute.

The MX5 is a great little jigger, but when it comes to moving house, carrying cleared vegetation away, or disposing of years of accumulated household clutter, it’s not a lot of use.

This was brought home a few weeks ago when I drove to the local hardware store to get a few bits and pieces, and realised that most of said bits and pieces weren’t portable in the Mazda.

Offspring in shared student accommodation seem to move house at least annually, and I got sick of hiring or borrowing Utes.

Having said that, anything I own has to be enjoyable to drive. I also prefer front engine, rear drive, and fully independent suspension. Once the decision was made to acquire a Ute, the next decision was which make.

Given my preferences above, it had to be a Commodore. I’ve owned Falcon sedans and driven Falcon Utes, and am familiar with the driving characteristics of the Henry*. They’re a great vehicle, but don’t drive as well as the Commodore.

The leaf spring rear end is also an anachronism these days. They’re OK when laden, but I’ll be driving the thing around empty most of the time.

The best value is had at auction, so that’s where I looked. I discovered a 2008 Omega with about 50000 on the clock, and ended up paying $3000 less for it than anything I’d found through a dealer of on private sale.

It’s ex Brisbane City Council, has been serviced regularly, and hasn’t copped a belting.

 The Mazda is sulking in the shed. It’s a lovely little thing, but life moves on.

I’ll make sure it goes to a good home.

*A Ford (as in Henry Ford).

Leyburn Sprints

I’ve been a petrol head ever since I was old enough to see over the dashboard of my father’s Standard Vanguard.

Our Vanguard was a sedan, and an earlier model than this one.

As a teenager, I’d contrive to get myself to circuits like Lowood and Lakeside to race meetings featuring amateurs who were in it for fun, not to make money. I must have been determined, as there was no way in a fit my father would take me, and I had to rely on older (and wealthier) friends and rellies to get me there.

MX5 club waiting to get in.

 I even did a stint as a flag marshal, overcoming the fear created by standing with my back to the direction of the cars as was necessary in some positions – usually those occupied by the most junior volunteers who had not established status on the pecking order.

There were some beautiful old cars displayed. This is a Healey 100/4.

 Later, when I had my licence and owned a car, I participated in the most rudimentary form of the sport – sprints.

And some ugly ones. This is a Bolwell Ikara.

At the time I owned a VW beetle. Sprinting in a 1200cc beetle? Enough said.

Still, it did teach me how to control oversteer.

Attending the Leyburn Sprints, therefore, is both an exercise in nostalgia and a return to the days when motor racing was a sport instead of a business.

A 1937 Ford Special.

To quote someone who learned about this a long time ago –

"The curse of commercialism is the ruin of every sport and the degeneracy of motor racing as a sport is due to the financial issues now involved in each race - the immense value of victory and the commercial disaster of defeat."

This was not written recently. It was penned by a pioneer British racing driver, Charles Jarrott (b.1877), who went on to say when writing his book Ten Years of Motors and Motor racing, 1896-1906 -

"I have raced because I love it, but a race of the present today would offer none of the charm which a race of five years ago afforded. It would have none of the sporting feeling or good comradeship between the fellow competitors".

Leyburn exudes charm. You can walk in amongst the cars and talk to the drivers.

MX5s were represented.

The format is simple – one car at a time in order of numbers. The circuit is tight which is a great leveller. Skill becomes as important as power.

I was 15 the last time I saw this racing (Lowood 1962).

A well-driven special is as likely to win as an expensive supercar.

Times are posted as the day goes on

This Cobra crossed the finish line sideways.

Sunday Drive - Flagstone Creek Road

Toowoomba Drivers

 I didn't need the Toowoomba Chronicle to tell me what I already know.

It may have something to do with the proportion of retired cow cockies living here, the enduring belief that the right-of-way rule applies on roundabouts, or the whimsical traffic engineering.

Maybe all three.

The most dangerous drivers are those wearing hats.

If you see a hat on a driver's head, be very afraid.

Mazda at Le Mans

It's worth remembering that Mazda won Le Mans in 1991.
I'd watch this just for the sound.

Be careful with your speaker volumes - it might make your ears bleed.

More Fleeting

You can have any colour so long as it's red.

Here, dear reader, for your careful perusal and edification, is another road test.

My fleet manager (she who must be obeyed), is utterly reliable, in that she always has requested vehicles available for the itinerary booked.

Where she does occasionally fall down is in providing a vehicle fit for purpose. Supplying a Hyundai Santa Fe diesel with a range of over 800km is overkill when all I need is something to get me 80km up the bitumen to Millmerran.

On the other hand, setting me up with a diminutive Hyundai i30 wagon (petrol) which has a safe range of 500 – 600km when I need to work at Yowah and Thargomindah is seriously bizarre.

Both these things have happened this month, but being the indefatigable worker that I am, I made do. Providing the bloody things have wheels, I’m good to go.

Last week I used the i30 for the big loop – St George, Cunnamulla, Yowah and Thargomindah.

It went OK.

Despite its un-fleet appearance (bright red), it turned out to be solid, comfortable, and capable of negotiating some dodgy tracks on the Black Gate short cut between Yowah and Thargo.

To be honest, the diesel version, if its engine and gearbox combination is anything like the Santa Fe’s, is probably the way to go. This one (petrol) gave about 7.5 lit/100km on the long stretches, and was a doddle to drive.

It also had a reasonable sound system with a USB port, and cruise control, so the 300km stretches that I drove went by pleasantly. I was able to listen to podcasts of Late Night Live and the Conversation Hour on a five dollar memory stick bought for the purpose.

Hyundais once had a terrible reputation, but they’ve improved at an amazing rate. These days they’re built like brick dunnies, and come with all the safety kit. This availability of state-of-the-art safety kit is what sells them to the fleet buyers.

The good things about this bucket of bolts included the steering, the ride, and the practical interior.

Not so good were the radio reception, the external mirrors which refused to stay in place against the slipstream, and tyre wear. On this car, the fronts were on the way out after only 27000km.

Fronts on the way out.

Tyre wear is not a problem on fleet vehicles, of course. Most drivers simply don't look at the tyres, and if they do, they don't let the fleet manager know that the tyre needs replacing.

And only 27236.

 Perhaps I'm old-fashioned, but I won't drive anything until I give it the once over. Once or twice, I've refused to take a car out because the tyres weren't legal. It doesn't make me popular.

Finally Finished

It's finally finished. The hardtop I mean.

Yeah, I know that's very poor English, but it covers the ground.

Getting this thing to the point where I was happy with it has taken nine months. Actually getting it home intact after buying it (from a vendor in Melbourne) was the biggest hassle.

The problems didn't stop there. It didn't fit well, and I had plenty of fiddling to do with the adjustments of the clamps that hold it down. It was trial and error, and there was much more error initially than trial.

The painting went OK, except that the guy doing the job had difficulty in reseating the rear window after he removed it.

He had to call in a windscreen specialist to get it right, and even then I wasn't happy with the way the beading settled at one corner. A few grams of Araldite with a lump of wood wedged against the garage holding it in place whilst it dried overnight did the trick.

The whole thing comes off in about one minute. Then you have a convertible for when the weather's good.

Now I need a storage solution for the hardtop.

Roaming in the Gloaming

The country is beginning to brown up. Photo by Jess.

It was murky. Photo by Jess.

 The Gloaming is an old English word for dusk or gloom.

It's entirely appropriate as a term to describe our MX5 club run last Sunday, as gloomy and dusky it was indeed.

This is an NC. Photo by Jess.

It was still great fun, except perhaps for the dash along the Heifer Creek road on the way back to Toowoomba. The tyres on my little beast are old, hard, and on the last 20% of tread life.

This is us. You can't see my white knuckles on the wheel. Photo by Jess.

Tiptoeing along through the rain and mist in convoy was a stern test of concentration, as the convoy leader was on new tyres.

More convoy work. Silver is popular. Photo by Jess.

I discovered that attempting to put the top up whilst waiting at the lights is best avoided. After trying it three times, but running out of red light each time, we continued en plein aire.

Harry and Andrea. Photo by Jess.

This led to another discovery. If you maintain speed above 80kph you stay dry.

The blue one is an NA.

The better photos are taken by Jess with her zoom-equipped Canon.

The magnificient seven. Photo by Jess.

Tops up by now.....

Mays on MX5

I unearthed this road test of an MX5 the other day.

It’s hosted by a younger-looking James May.

The model is the same as mine – 1800cc motor and six speed gearbox. It was promoted in the UK as a special edition, and never sold here. The specifications are the same as the version sold in Australia as the NB.

What he says is right. It is reliable, doesn’t leak, and is fun to drive.

For me, the best feature is its gearbox. My kids can’t drive manuals.

Muttering Rotter's Thoughts on a Dualis

If I had my time over again, I'd be a muttering rotter.*

It sounds to me the perfect occupation. Driving a wide variety of cars and being paid to write about them can't be bad. Having said that, along with the job would go deadlines, and I've never been much good at meeting them.

Which brings me to an attempt to review the Nissan Dualis. I've just travelled 2300km in a bright red example, across a variety of roads, although the bulk of travelling was at 110km/hr on straight bitumen roads. I have no idea why it was red. Maybe Nissan had a job lot of red ones they unloaded on the fleet market.

There are a range of vehicles available now that are derived from AWD SUVs. For those of you offended by acronyms, AWD means all-wheel-drive (as opposed to 4WD - four-wheel-drive) and SUV is transpacific jargon for sports-utility-vehicle.

I say derived, as this thing is not four-wheel-drive, even if it looks like it should be. Just to make sure I crawled underneath and counted the diffs. There was one only, and it was up front.

Why so? I guess the manufacturers have realised that they can take advantage of whatever image a car that looks like a four-wheel-drive delivers, and at the same time produce a lighter, more fuel-efficient vehicle for less money. The advantages include higher ground clearance, easier ingress and egress (especially for those like me approaching dotage) and a higher driving position. Most punters couldn't tell the difference from behind the wheel.

It's definitely a lot easier to access that my MX5, but to be frank, not much better in this aspect than our Focus. It does, however, have a very user-friendly driving position, and the elevated nature of this comes in handy when overtaking. The higher you sit, the further you can see.

It is reasonably fuel-efficient, with the readout indicating 7.5lit/100km when I returned it to the fleet depot yesterday. At the end of the westward journey it was showing 6.9. I guess driving into the teeth of a South Easterly had something to do with that.

I was quiet, comfortable, and a doddle to drive. I wasn't all that impressed by the performance, but that may be a perception rather than a reality. It uses one of those mysterious CVT transmissions, which holds the motor at a level which maintains the maximum torque to produce best acceleration and economy. Consequently, power comes on very smoothly, and sinking the slipper seems to produce more noise rather than more speed. For all that, it seemed to overtake quickly. That's important given the procession of mining equipment (including whopping great dongas) that has become the Warrego highway.

It cruises at 110km with the revcounter showing 2100, which means it's a fairly relaxed cruiser for this size of vehicle. No doubt a diesel would be even more cruisy, but despite the fact that the Nissan X-Trail packs a diesel, this one does not - at this stage anyway.

The only negative I discovered was a bit of back pain after one 300km stretch which I put down to a badly-positioned drivers' seat. A bit of fiddling with the rake lever cured this, and I emerged pain-free after later long stretches.

The verdict? This is an honest, comfortable, practical example of a new segment. At $25990 for the manual, it's good value.

Its rivals in this growing sector of the market include the Mazda CX-5, Kia Sportage, Hyundai iX-35, and Ssang Yong Korando.

*Motoring writer

Out Stanthorpe Way

Our MX5 club took a 98 kilometre Sunday afternoon run around the back roads of Stanthorpe.

I thought it was worth sharing. Thanks to Matthew who mounted a camera on his NA.

I didn't choose the music.

Beaut Ute

My kids are always shifting house.

Sometimes I think that it’s just a ritual demonstration of continuing dependency. Whatever – possession of a Ute is a powerful advantage when it comes to shifting.

I don’t, of course (own a Ute – that is). When I was making decisions about what form of transport I’d require for retirement, I thought leisure and pleasure, not shifting sprogs.

A roadster is not terribly useful at times like these.

So, there have been a number of occasions when I’ve needed a Ute. Once or twice, I hired a Japanese one-tonner (Toyota Hi-Ace or some such). Each time it did the job, but didn’t feel right.

The steering was numb, the ride woeful (especially when empty) and it always seemed to be working hard. It also had a fly-off handbrake.

Now fly-off handbrakes were invented by the Brits. They are one of the few things the Brits invented that the Japanese didn’t improve.

In fact, they made the stupid things worse – if that’s possible.

My brother-in-law has a BA Falcon Ute (pictured). He bought it at a government auction. The BA is familiar territory to me, having owned (or rather leased) an SR version a few years ago. I’ve since disposed of it, but the memory (fond) lingers.

BIL’s Ute pulls like a train, is comfortable, comes free (although I always return it with a full tank of juice, and a bottle of plonk), and is comfortable and easy to drive.

It doesn’t have a fly-off handbrake.

Now if I can persuade one of said sprogs to buy a Ute, I could, in a manner of speaking, have my cake and eat it too.

Minimalist Motoring

 

Have you ever watched the ubiquitous electric trolleys scooting around the burbs, and wondered about transport solutions for an increasingly congested urban environment?

The vast majority of Australians live in exactly these situations, yet we persist in buying machines to get us from home to supermarket, friends’ place, sporting venue or restaurant that weigh tonnes, use extravagant amounts of rapidly diminishing resources and take up precious road space.

We are conditioned to believe that unless our daily transport tool can travel at 200 km/hr, has a range of 750 kms, and is capable of shifting the contents of the shed out the back in one hit, it’s not worth having.

I’ll concede that maybe once or twice a year, we may need to undertake the Great Australian Road Trip, but why would you buy any piece of kit based on a need that is the exception rather than the rule?

Hire a 4WD when you need it – in the long run it’s a helluva lot cheaper.


It’s a bit like purchasing an industrial grade refrigerator when your needs are domestic only. Madness – yet when it comes to motor cars, we generally take leave of our senses.

Before you scoff – consider this.

In rapidly developing India, the industrial giant Tata has come up with a solution to India’s everyday transport problems called the Nano.

It will get four people from one side of Kolkatā or Mumbai to another quickly, relatively quietly, and out of the weather for very little fuel. It may not meet our local vehicle safety requirements, but it’s a bloody sight safer than your average pushbike, motor bike or 20 year old clunker.

So if it works in India, why not here?

Based on up-to-date currency conversions, a Tata Nano would retail here for $2820 AUD. That’s less than you’d pay for a battery powered senior’s scooter.

And they’re air-conditioned. Apparently it gets hot in India.

Watch the tester driving along talking to the camera which is outside the vehicle (at about 1.02).

That's confidence.