Re: I'm not going to reply there...

First off was a 1980 Toyota Corona.
http://upload.wikime...Sedan_-Front-.jpg
Beige (of course). Because it was my first car, it was of course the bestest thing on wheels. OK, so that feeling lasted a whole month or two. After one sizable stupid-young-male-driver accident, it quickly degenerated and was hastily traded in on ...

1985 Holden Commodore
http://i11.ebayimg.c...?set_id=80000500F
Yeah, I was All That in this car :) For a 3.3 litre six, it really moved. Someone smashed into it the day i was announced Sydney won the bid for the 200 Olympics(!). Finally sold it coz one day when I was driving home I saw...

1986 Toyota Celica
http://www.cars-dire...a_celica_2601.jpg
This was my lesson in why you Do Not Impulse-Buy A Car. It actually kind broke down on the way home from the dealership. A sign of things to come. But it ended up being a love/hate relationship, coz when it was actually working, it was such good fun, a wonderful car to drive. And pop up headlights! I noticed that like most owners of cars with pop-up headlights, it takes only the most minute degradation in natural dayight to make me think "ooh, better put the pop-up lights on!". (Look around - when dusk is still a long way away, any car with pop-up headlights will almost surely have its headlights on:)
Sure it'd scrape its front spoiler on everything, the suspension would bottom out if you ran over so much as a toothpick, but it was all worth it on the days when it wasn't getting fixed. At one stage my workmates ran a little competition to see if it would last two weeks without having a problem. It got there..but I think it was a few months after the started their little scheme. Traded it in when it was, I'm quite sure, about 5 minutes away from a total engine failure, on ...

1994 Nissan Bluebird SSS
http://www.cargurus....15/pic-37731.jpeg
After the Celica, all I was interested in was reliability. This thing had it in spades. In the five-and-a-bit years I owned it, it only let me down once. Not a very exciting car, but handled OK, had nearly enough oomph, didn't cost me all that much to keep and did everything I asked of it, without problem or complaint. And the head-up display was not only cool, but genuinely useful in speeding-fines-au-go-go New South Wales. Then one day my brother told me one of his friends was selling his ..

1999 Mazda MX-5
http://www.premierca...b_525x367_mx5.jpg
By this stage I'd changed jobs and was taking the train to work each day - so I'd usually only drive once a week if I were lucky. So I figured if I only drive once a week, I want it to be fun, and who gives a shit about practicality. OF course when I bought it I couldn't drive a manual, but hey I figured it's a sure-fire way to make me learn how to drive a real car :) And what an awesome car, love it. Handles like nothing else anywhere near its price range, it's not super-fast but certainly quick enough, and I may be biased but I still think it's much better looking than the current one. It has a boot not much bigger than a briefcase, cabin storage that'll hold two, maybe three muesli bars, but I don't care. Mazda's "horse and rider" marketing guff suddenly makes sense. You really feel like there's not much mechanical interference between you, the steering wheel, and the road. There's certainly not much distance between your bum and the road, that's for sure! It's ten years old now, and starting to show the typical 10-year-old-car niggles, but I can't part with it yet, I'm having too much 'zoom-zoom' fun.

A much-refined A-H Sprite, but sounds like about the same sense that it's a roller-skate which You are directing / and it follows.
Most folks (who don't ride cycles) never experience that er, cyborg- sense.

That being ~so, note that a controlled- "two-wheel drift" in the 3-D equilibrium of the two-wheeler ... engages lots more of that inner gyroscope than the simpler, planar equivalent of carz. In any (next) event though -- a few such experiences for-fun can really SYA/instinctively, when the fates converge on a dicey situation.
I Hates evull-handling carz (and the bean-counters who force their mass-production) as there are so few reasons to build such crapware, any more == usually just pure-refined greed at the parts, engineering level.

Also.. tires, Tires! -- rubber formulation; screw the longevity: it's Your Ass hung out there, daily.

(Everyone gets to be Tazio Nuvolari ... for 5 seconds. If lucky.)

Post #304,919 by Meerkat 3/2/09 6:54:02 AM Reply	Re: I'm not going to reply there... First off was a 1980 Toyota Corona. http://upload.wikime...Sedan_-Front-.jpg Beige (of course). Because it was my first car, it was of course the bestest thing on wheels. OK, so that feeling lasted a whole month or two. After one sizable stupid-young-male-driver accident, it quickly degenerated and was hastily traded in on ... 1985 Holden Commodore http://i11.ebayimg.c...?set_id=80000500F Yeah, I was All That in this car :) For a 3.3 litre six, it really moved. Someone smashed into it the day i was announced Sydney won the bid for the 200 Olympics(!). Finally sold it coz one day when I was driving home I saw... 1986 Toyota Celica http://www.cars-dire...a_celica_2601.jpg This was my lesson in why you Do Not Impulse-Buy A Car. It actually kind broke down on the way home from the dealership. A sign of things to come. But it ended up being a love/hate relationship, coz when it was actually working, it was such good fun, a wonderful car to drive. And pop up headlights! I noticed that like most owners of cars with pop-up headlights, it takes only the most minute degradation in natural dayight to make me think "ooh, better put the pop-up lights on!". (Look around - when dusk is still a long way away, any car with pop-up headlights will almost surely have its headlights on:) Sure it'd scrape its front spoiler on everything, the suspension would bottom out if you ran over so much as a toothpick, but it was all worth it on the days when it wasn't getting fixed. At one stage my workmates ran a little competition to see if it would last two weeks without having a problem. It got there..but I think it was a few months after the started their little scheme. Traded it in when it was, I'm quite sure, about 5 minutes away from a total engine failure, on ... 1994 Nissan Bluebird SSS http://www.cargurus....15/pic-37731.jpeg After the Celica, all I was interested in was reliability. This thing had it in spades. In the five-and-a-bit years I owned it, it only let me down once. Not a very exciting car, but handled OK, had nearly enough oomph, didn't cost me all that much to keep and did everything I asked of it, without problem or complaint. And the head-up display was not only cool, but genuinely useful in speeding-fines-au-go-go New South Wales. Then one day my brother told me one of his friends was selling his .. 1999 Mazda MX-5 http://www.premierca...b_525x367_mx5.jpg By this stage I'd changed jobs and was taking the train to work each day - so I'd usually only drive once a week if I were lucky. So I figured if I only drive once a week, I want it to be fun, and who gives a shit about practicality. OF course when I bought it I couldn't drive a manual, but hey I figured it's a sure-fire way to make me learn how to drive a real car :) And what an awesome car, love it. Handles like nothing else anywhere near its price range, it's not super-fast but certainly quick enough, and I may be biased but I still think it's much better looking than the current one. It has a boot not much bigger than a briefcase, cabin storage that'll hold two, maybe three muesli bars, but I don't care. Mazda's "horse and rider" marketing guff suddenly makes sense. You really feel like there's not much mechanical interference between you, the steering wheel, and the road. There's certainly not much distance between your bum and the road, that's for sure! It's ten years old now, and starting to show the typical 10-year-old-car niggles, but I can't part with it yet, I'm having too much 'zoom-zoom' fun. They said I was gullible ... and I believed them
Post #304,962 by static 3/2/09 5:33:43 PM Reply	I'm glad you replied. :) I'd forgotten about the Celica... Wade. "Ah -- I take it the doorbell doesn't work?"
Post #305,006 by Ashton 3/3/09 3:03:18 PM Reply	Mazda -- A much-refined A-H Sprite, but sounds like about the same sense that it's a roller-skate which You are directing / and it follows. Most folks (who don't ride cycles) never experience that er, cyborg- sense. That being ~so, note that a controlled- "two-wheel drift" in the 3-D equilibrium of the two-wheeler ... engages lots more of that inner gyroscope than the simpler, planar equivalent of carz. In any (next) event though -- a few such experiences for-fun can really SYA/instinctively, when the fates converge on a dicey situation. I Hates evull-handling carz (and the bean-counters who force their mass-production) as there are so few reasons to build such crapware, any more == usually just pure-refined greed at the parts, engineering level. Also.. tires, Tires! -- rubber formulation; screw the longevity: it's Your Ass hung out there, daily. (Everyone gets to be Tazio Nuvolari ... for 5 seconds. If lucky.)

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