Dodgy dealers

So this week we will be telling you a few dodgy car stories. Im going to focus on my recent experience about wanting to import a car from Japan to Australia. SO i'm in the market for a decent EVO and under sevs law the VIIIMR qualifies for import without having to own it overseas for at least a year and blah blah ... all the other stupid import laws. Some of you are probably wondering why i would bother going to the trouble of importing, and my answer is you can get mint cars in Japan and at a fraction of the cost you will get one on the AUDM. As long as the particular model complies with vehicles eligible for import (theres a list called SEVS that has all the models). ALSO you can avoid dodgy Australian car dealers, which i will get to in a minute.

So I jump online and browse the Japanese car auctions, as well as contact a few importer brokers that can source the car over from Japan and organise compliance etc. NO surprise it is cheaper for me to source one from Japan with decent mileage...in fact it would even work out cheaper for me to FLY to Japan, bid on the car in person, put it on a ship and send it home, and fly home...IM not joking, the mark-ups the dealers make on these cars in Aus is cray cray.

So before i go ahead and commit to buying the car in Japan i decide to do a little domestic shopping here and this is where i get to the whole lot of dodgy....
I visited 6 used car dealers that had a selection of EVO's for sale and considering these cars are around 2004 models i was shocked to find some with 40,000kms and less! BOY, now was i confused! Was i waisting my time importing a car? when i could get one here with such low kms and drive it home straight away and just pay the extra $$.

BUT wait! It gets even more interesting. After tossing and turning i jump on forums and speak to a few importers and find that a few people have been ripped off by dealers that import cars and then wind back the mileage. So i go back and visit the 6 car dealers and ask them if i can see the 'Dereg' or Export certificate, which is in Japanese but shows the vehicles kms at the last 2 compulsory vehicle roadworthy checks in Japan. 5 out of the 6 dealers refused to show me these papers claiming that they had lost them and other excuses. BUT under SEVS import rules dealers that are compliance workshops are required to keep the original copy of this document on file. All these dealers except for 1 were compliance workshops and this now confirmed my suspicions that in fact these cars i was looking at had a lot more mileage than what was showing.

Im not saying that all dealers are involved in this, and i know of a few that are more than happy to show you all the papers you need... But there are used car dealers that are still importing cars, getting them professionally detailed and winding back the mileage. And these guys are sharks, that deserve to be punched. J-Spec is an import broker that has also done a little research on this practise and if you want to read a little more about their findings - follow this link.

Needless to say i plan on sourcing the Evo from Japan and have my eye glued on a few... will keep you posted on how my importing experience goes.

- Boost

Even At Our Worst We're Still Better Than Most.

Obviously, the vehicle that sits comfortably atop the pile of glory that is Worst Car Ever is my ex-magna. Una pieza de mierda que I sincerely hope is rotting somewhere. Seriously, fine readers, heed my advice. Do not buy a car off a dude in Penrith with a weird hook-finger. It will only bring you sorrow, suffering and extreme poverty. Every day your man here was all like “¡Esta weá no funciona, vete a la mierda!”

Actually, that mid-nineties era of Magnas are kinda all like, wow. Or maybe that's just my experience. CONFIRMATION BIAS.

A friend once had an old, possibly built in the 70's, I really don't know, Renault. Eat my embedded sentences YEAH! It was pretty suck. It would forget about the whole handbrake/park thang from time to time and he would return to find it gently resting on whatever happened to be downhill from wherever it was he had decided to park. Awesome. To be fair doe, that car was merely old and cannot be held entirely to blame for what are essentially little more than the charms and quirks of a well-aged machine.

No, no, if we are truly talking 'Worst Car' it's not fair to pick on one that did all that was required of it until eventually, it collapsed in upon itself. Rather, we must acknowledge these monumental clusterfucks that get produced and suck from day zero. These vehicles that somehow manage to slip through R&D, trials, prototypes, taste, logic 'n all dat. Our very own creations that slide on out the other side of a production line as some sort of obnoxious, in-yo-face monstrosity of design, motoring and human achievement. Something like, well, here's the thing. I don't know. Sure I could google and pretend like I know. But I'm an honest man, man. My heart wouldn't be in it. Sure, I could rant about a certain Pontiac Aztec or that one Pinto but I don't really know what I'm talking about.

What I do know though, is that this blog entry is going to leave you with similar feels to those provided by a shitty car. Sure, it fills a need and there is a fair-to-good chance it will get you where you need to be but you cannot help but feel disappointed, frustrated, cheated and a little uglier for being associated with it.

For that I am sorry.

Not really.

My reviews are so average they aren't even really reviews.

Video unrelated:

Word.

-anxzibitinyoxzibit

Fiat thinks outside the box....Or simply just adds curves and wheels to the box

The Fiat Multipla seems to work very well on paper....carrying 6 people in two rows but when it comes to style this bubbled cube is something that Fiat has compromised aesthetics for function. The car as practical as it may be isn't appealing at all.

The Multipla wasn't a very successful seller other than in Italy, it was voted the Ugliest Car by Top Gear in 1999 and its shape gets mixed reactions from people. It seems Fiat ran out of ideas and put the car together in a day... with a baby whale in mind. But yet people still purchase them, and attest to how practical they are. Which is fair enough. This would definitely be a case of beauty being in the eye of the beholder.

-Boost

You Ain't Got No Alibi

So I have this friend. I don't wanna put his business out there but whenever I look at him, I think two things;

1) Where is this money he owes me?

and

2) What kind of mortal sin did his parents commit to provoke sweet baby Jesus into beating the crap out of this guy with an ugly stick? DON'T EVEN BOTHER GOING TO CHURCH OR PRAYING. AIN'T NO SAVING THIS POOR BOY NOW.

This is how I feel about the following cars. I couldn't decide on any single car so I'm just going to put a whole bunch of cars on blast real quick for you. 

Say hello to the Ssangyong Rodius.

OH MY BUDDHA WHAT IS THAT

The Rodius is a 7-seater and aurraaaaaaaaaAAAUUUGHHH. LOOK AT IT. LOOK AT THE BACK. It's like the Korean dudes designing this were planning the car starting from the front then at the back, when they should have stopped they were like "Nah keep going, keep going, keep going. STOP. NOW ADD AN UGLY-AS-HELL BACK PANEL. SWEET. 완벽 하군. NOW LET'S PLAY STARCRAFT AYE?"

I can not believe that something this ugly came from the same country which produced Girl's Generation. Augh, I can't even look at it anymore. Next.

Tongji Auto Fuel Cell Powered Roadster

This abomination is Tongji Auto's (yeah, I have no idea) new concept roadster unveiled at the 2013 Shanghai Auto Show. It looks like the aliens that made the ships in the Halo games were like "You know what? I'm tired of riding around my Type 32 RAV. And tired of getting shot down by Master Chief. I WAN'T A VACATION. AND A CAR TO GO WITH IT. ALIEN MIDLIFE CRISIS." The front is nasty. It looks like Kha'Zix from League of Legends had a baby with a Magikarp. The windshield is too tall. Especially since the average height of the dudes buying this car will be around 4"11-5"2 at the most. And the fact that they chose Pedophile Magenta as the colour does not help. Yuck. 

Subaru Tribeca

Finally, the 2006 Subaru Tribeca. I have a story. I was sitting in a car with my then-girlfriend (SHUT UP, I'M ALRIGHT) and I saw a Subaru Tribeca for the first time. I was so disgusted and taken aback by the design of this thing that I nearly fishtailed the car in front of me. I had to park the car and weep. WEEP. AND SOB. The sides of this thing are decent enough looking, but then you get to the front. THE FRONT. It looks like Mr Subaru got his little boy to go on MS Paint and make a car. He got a little bit excited with the rounded-cornered rectangles and then that was that. Whenever I see this car on the road, I feel really sad. Sometimes I feel like I need to seek out help for it. I'm not even angry. Just sad. /sigh.

-Ramonito

                                                                          

BatMobile

Gossip Goat signing in yo

Dream car huh! Well of course all reason needs to be thrown straight into the trash! My dream is of course the freaking bat mobile. YES who the hell wouldn't want to cruise around in this bad boy!

Not to mention some fresh black camouflage trim, wheels like no other and comes equipped with some handy little accessories. Grenade launcher anyone???VTEC? V8? BRRRRRT throw all the V nonsense out the window I'd like to go up against any of that jargon in a 1/4 mile race in the batmobile (if you were winning id just blast you straight off the road anyway).

But if thats not enough for you to splurge a cool 4.2mill on a sex machine of a vehicle, maybe the rocket launcher will change your mind??? No? still not convinced this bad boy meets my dream car material because its literally a jet on land fitted with a jet engine! SAY WHAT!

Getting away from the po po is easy with a heavy armoured body but who the hell is gonna keep with a  rolling jet... like c'mon..


Annoying passengers? NO PROBLEM!! ejector seats tehehe

If you're not sold on ejector seats you need to go have a long hard look at yourself, actually scratch that GO and rent some BATMAN movies and see first hand what the Sonny Bill Williams of car is capable of!

Gossip Goat OUT xoxo

A man dreams, he looks towards the Sky...line...GT-R

Greetings all! VTECpony here, now a dream car for any person can be whatever they want it to be, it's the car that if they were given the choice of ANY car in the world, they would choose that one car. Of all the million dollar supercars, or eco-friendly smart car hybrids there's one car that I would choose in a heartbeat, and that, ladies and gentleman, would be the 2012 Nissan GT-R (Okay, I'd settle for any Skyline GT-R, they're that amazing).

2012 Nissan Skyline GT-R in GT Blue

(Image courtesy of http://wallpaper.imcphoto.net/nissan-skyline-gtr-wallpapers.html)

The Nissan Skyline is arguably one of Nissan's, if not, Japan's greatest automotive exports. The GT-R spec model of the Skyline were first produced and released in 1969 and became the flagship model for Nissan's performance vehicles, being a step above its current fleet specwise. Below is a small summarised infographic containing the history of the Skyline car, from its humble begininings as a 44kW Skyline Deluxe, to the 390kW race-spec GTR monster it is today.

The history of the Skyline

(Image courtesy of http://www.gtrcanada.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/nissan_skyline_history_gtrcanada.jpg)

The Nissan GT-R picked up where the Skyline GT-Rs left off, with production starting in 2007 till present, with the newly announced 2013 GT-R only just released. Now let's get down to numbers, the Nissan GT-R is a car made for performance driving, it is a beast, and as such it's specs speak to its design and purpose, to go fast.

The latest edition, 2013 Nissan GT-R

(Image courtesy of http://wallpaper.imcphoto.net/nissan-skyline-gtr-wallpapers.html)

The 2-door sports coupe has a front-engine and is all wheel drive, and the 3.8L VR38DETT  V6 twin-turbo engine goes from a standing start to 100km/h in approximately 3 seconds (crazy fast), and in 2011 earned the Guiness World Book of Records title for fastest 0-60mp/h in a 4-seater production car. The car puts out 404kW of power at the wheels (or approximately 542 horsepower), and weighs in at 1,730 kg.

The record breaking VR38DETT V6 twin-turbo engine

(Image courtesy of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nissan_GT-R_engine.jpg)

The GT-R is a beautiful example of Japanese performance and design, and brings together years of innovation and with a rich history of influential and significant Japanese exports behind it, is a car truly deserved of the title "Dream Car". And compared to your average Lamborghini or Ferrari, comes at a reasonable cost, with prices starting at the $175 000 mark, which is pretty reasonable, being a tenth of the price of some supercars.

That being said, my dream car is a car I wish to own one day, not a car I'll get from winning the lottery, and as such, the Nissan GT-R is my dream car.

-VTECpony

Dream On

Hola mi Gente. It's ya boy Ramonito here.

This week is dream car week over with the Average Guys, and BOY. LET ME TELL YOU. YES YOU. YOU JONATHAN. We have been going to TOWN. We're all relatively poor. Except for Kyle. Bloody Kyle. So I know that for me, I know that my Dream Car is probably only going to be a dream. So SCREW IT. THROW REALISM OUT THE WINDOW. LEGO.

Say hello to the BMW 4219 Eli!

BMW 4219 Eli

This car was designed by BMW for a four year old boy named Eli (one of my aliases) and this design was posted on the BMW USA Facebook page. Wow. This boy got style. This car has 42 Wheels, 19 Porsche Boxster engines, 3 steering wheels (it must be piloted by three drivers, yes). Most importantly though, it has a specific storage compartment for toys. CAR GOT ROOM FOR YOUR LEGOS HOMIE.

On a more serious note though, I really want General Lee from the Dukes of Hazzard.

GENERAL MOFUGN LEE

General Lee is a 68-69 Dodge Charger. General Lee is a male. I think that's pretty thug. I can't really say much about him, I just really really want him. I want to be able to jump over creeks and whatnot. IMAGINE THAT. NO MORE BRIDGES EVER. DAMN THOSE NARROW BRIDGES. I HATE TRUCKS. DAMN. Judging from the image above, I think that the General Lee spends more time in the air than on the road. Which means I would have to get a piloting license I think. HELL YEAH. QUALIFICATIONS. (*Dukes of Hazzard Horn Sound Bite*). Most of all though, this is my dream car because, deep down in my heart, I want to be a redneck. There. I said it. Ever watch True Blood? I want to talk like that. SOOKEH. ITS NAWT SAFE IN HEEYA. They have this simple charm that Australian bogans don't have. This car would give me that charm. And that is my dream. Peace.

- Ramonito