corozin

So it's not just me then. I thought I was the only one tipping my entire wallet into all-motor rebuilding & tuning these days. We must both be masochists. But if you feel like the worst is over, have a look at the attachment. This is how bad it can be. This is my costs, excluding tax, insurance & petrol since last summer. John

Well yes you're absolutely right. The stewards this year seem to have been enforcing an invisible rule of drivers "impeding Ferrari's God-given right to win". There's an interesting article on Planet F1 at the moment, which catalogues the stewards decisions this year. If Hamilton hadn't received his various penalties he would have been 22 points ahead before the Japanese GP, and would probably have tied up the Championship as far back as August...

I agree - that picture encapsulates James Hunt perfectly. Race driver, tab smoker, glitzy bird puller. What a life that man led :)

Inevitable

Absolute quality. Right now with my bloody car in the bloody garage yet bloody again I'm in the bloody mood to create a bloody "gearbox" version of that post...

It's just a bit of a shame those pictures are so poor. There are hints of detailing in those pictures that really don't get justice, particularly below the front bumper. Like others it's not my cup o'tea but ute's are massive in Australia and it sure is an interesting show car idea. As a seperate statement I'd love an M3 or M5 but I wouldn't want to own one of the newer models (post E34/E36). Lots of design problems, all very expensive to fix, all now outside warranty. My local "German" specialist currently has 5x E46 M3's in with various engine woes...

Well otherwise it will just be like 1000 other "demotivator" threads on t'interweb. I admit I'm finding them a little harder to come up with now, but relish the challenge guys! Original work please!

Time for an ickle bump...

I believe there is published reseach which proves that if Neil Kinnock were to stop opening his mouth there would be a measurable reduction in the entire planet's CO2 emissions

More like...

One can only hope...

I would be severely worried about the mental health of someone who refused to buy what in best cases will be a 12 year old car simply because you don't have a fully stamped service book. A big pile of receipts is far more inidicative of a car's health (or rather - maintenance)

I still got some left in me...

RIght I'm going to try and find the edges of whats acceptable :)

ROTFL :D

Now we're really all rocking. Quality posts - and fast becoming a legendary thread :D

Somebody stop me...

All these cars are great. I totally admire anyone who takes it that far as it's not really what I do myself and I havn't even done the show-car-thing for 3-4 years now. As long as people aren't gluing gawkish scoopy jap-front ends on Corrados they have my admiration. I wasn't bigging James up as better than anyone else, but I think it's fair to defend a long-time friend and talented guy if I think people pick at him a little unfairly. In any event it's James' ex-university mate Doug that actually owns the wildest-modified Corrado in the UK. Thats the one with the Aston Martin Vantage interior installed in it... amongst other things... [/Don's flame suit and reaches for fire extinguisher] p.s. Are we actually "violently agreeing" on here in some byzantine way?

I think the real point is less about the quality of the workmanship and more about the mix of ideas that James brought to the car. I mean who else can honestly say they would have thought of the Corvette wheels, the various Porsche seat combinations he tried out or that neat little Porsche 914 badge? Who thought of putting the Climatronic system into a Corrado before he did? That's right - no one on here did that's for sure. But since workmanship has been mentioned, I'd challenge anybody to produce a TT dash conversion that is superior to the one in that car. It fits properly, it doesn't squeak or rattle, there were no wires hanging anywhere (unlike a few TT'd cars I've seen), all the soft-closures on the controls were spot on, and in addition all of the functions and gauges worked, including the "dash lighting up when you open the door" bit. There may be conversions as good, but none better IMHO. Obviously every car is individual to it's owner. We all want different things, have different levels of talent & vision to realise them, and some of us can spend more time than others making it happen. But the two things that always blew me away about James' cars are firstly how far he managed to dive into the VAG & Porsche parts bins to find things that he could fit (or just try out) and above all how little money he managed to build that car for. The man is a Jedi-master on eBay, and a complete bastard to deal with if he's buying parts off you :D

The inspiration hasn't run out yet.

I thought the children were named Adolf, Heinrich & Josef after his godparents? [ducks and waits for lawsuit]

Appreciating function over form (or "cars that look like milkfloats* and go like rockets") is no bad thing Kev. I have a limited budget, and I will always always always put money into parts you can't see as opposed to parts you can unless bigger wheels are functional or the bling dissipates heat better :nuts: :lol: :salute: *Not that the C is a milkfloat ;) Anyways, off-topic :| Amen to all of that. Give me a Corrado with go over a Corrado with show anyday. James' car was actually pretty quick once it had the 24v in it.

A good Corrado makes a great track day car, but a good MkII will always be faster as (aside from anything else) they weigh about 20% less.

Well since you bring that point up Andy, isn't it rather ironic that in a time when F1 is trying to promote itself as all 'green and hugging the polar bears' with gimmicks like kinetic storage devices, that they simultaniously push for the building of even more (and even grander) 'state of the art' Formula One facilities. Concrete processing generates almost 1 tonne of CO2 for each tonne of concrete made. Did you see the size of those concrete buildings in Singapore? How many thousands of tonnes of C02 was produced by all that building of a pitlane that will only be used once a year? Then of course we have the night race, with floodlights powered by tens of double-redundancy diesel generators for no other reason than to put the show on at 2pm European time 'live'. I'm not the greatest tree-hugger in the world, but wasting all those precious resources simply to get a live feed on time strikes me as pretty bloody wasteful.

One just hopes that Ferrari don't use the same circuitry in the brake warning lights of thier road cars as they do in the pit-stop gantry... y'know Italian electrics are infamous etc, etc. LOL