Cars

Did you feel ripped off this holiday season when you parked your car in the city, at a shopping centre or at the airport when picking up or dropping off loved ones?

If paying inflated petrol prices wasn’t enough, motorists are now also being hit with inflated parking rates when they go shopping or to the airport. Then, of course, there are the CBD parking stations that cost an arm and a leg.

It’s these CBD parking stations that consistently cost motorists dearly as the fees at the CBD parking stations start climbing the moment that boom gate rises to let you in.

Continue reading "Save up your pocket money if you wanna park in CBD" »

Australian governments have a long history of offering taxpayers’ money to private businesses in an effort to get them to come or stay. Liberal and Country League Premier Tom Playford elevated it to an art form after 1945 when he set out to build an industrial and manufacturing base in South Australia. Tax holidays, grants, cheap land, incentives, and cheap public housing for the industrial workforces through the Housing Trust.

In fact, the use of public money to convince car-makers goes back even further. My attention was drawn to a question asked in the South Australian Legislative Council on 14 August 1935. The LCL government was asked “what steps has the government taken to encourage General Motors Holdens Limited to remain in South Australia?” The answer: “The government is much concerned about the possibility of losing that industry and is doing everything possible to retain it”.

That question and answer could describe the current decision-making process concerning both GMH and Ford. The Federal, Victorian and South Australian governments are embroiled in trying to work out just how much taxpayer money will be needed to keep both functioning in Australia.

Continue reading "Is it really worth propping up the ailing car industry?" »

Thanks to the high dollar, Australians have become the world’s most savvy online bargain hunters. Parcels with cheaper DVDs from the US, computer games from Hong Kong and books from Britain now arrive on our shores in the thousands every day.

Australian buyers obviously know how much they can save by shunning domestic retailers for their overseas competitors. Little wonder when, say, Steve Jobs’ biography is selling for $44 in Australia but for the equivalent of just $18 in Britain. Some British online retailers even offer free world-wide shipping.

What most Australians are probably unaware of is how much more they could save if it was possible to buy other goods internationally. Cars for example.

Continue reading "How are we ripped off? Let us count the ways…" »

Last week I was standing at a pedestrian crossing at the Adelaide Airport with my two kids, aged five and eight. There was a car coming towards us, moving fairly slowly and appearing to slow down. In one of those split-second moments which people without kids will pontificate about, but which parents understand, we started to step onto the crossing.

The driver didn’t stop. He went straight through, missing us by inches. I shouted at him, as did a bystander, but he kept meandering along the road for about another 30m. He stopped his car smack-bang in the middle of the road, right on the white line between two lanes, where a security guard approached him to inquire as to what the hell he was doing.

The driver was so old that he possibly didn’t even know he was in a car at all.  He looked like he was 90 in the shade. At least.

Continue reading "Doddery old drivers should not be a protected species" »

MY husband, a man I’ve long adored for his principles, his fine British wit, his modesty and – I’ll admit it – his good looks, has just done something completely out of character. He’s bought a flash car.

OK, it’s not that flash. It’s a few years old. But it’s a posh make favoured by the royal family and the type of car Top Gear host Jeremy Clarkson calls “slightly caddish”.

Oh all right, what Jeremy actually says is, “It’s the sort of car driven by the sort of person who would go away for a weekend with his wife and spend the night flirting outrageously with the waitress.” (I’ve never liked Jeremy.)

Continue reading "There’s something about men and cars…" »

Cadel Evans’ heroic performance at the Tour de France is being celebrated around Australia, as it should. I’ve been watching the Tour for a long time, and it’s the best individual sporting performance I’ve ever seen.

Over the past three weeks, between the wee hours of 10pm and 2am, Evans has bought together the previously estranged cycling fans and those who have never ridden a bike to jointly applaud his guts and determination, his enormous heart and never-say-die attitude. All qualities we Aussies love and admire in our sports heroes.

The response has been wholly positive. Almost. Despite Evans’ epic win, some media commentators have still felt the need to roll out the tired “well, I guess this means we have to put up with more lycra-clad clowns on the roads” line.

Continue reading "Share the road safely with those ‘lycra-clad clowns’" »

Anonymous says:

“It’s been awhile since I’d been in the car with dad, but when he offered to drive to my cousin’s place last Sunday, I said yep. Hey, it was a great excuse to indulge in a extra glass of wine or two. Anyway, it wasn’t at all relaxing. From the minute we turned out of the driveway, I was gripping my seat. His driving was out of hand. Forgetting to check mirrors, not indicating and one terrible moment at the traffic lights when we skimmed through a red. He’s 75 this year and always been a pretty good driver. But I’m worried about him. What if he hurts himself? What if he hurts other people? If it was anybody else I’d be ringing the cops straight away. But can I really turn in my dad?”

Can you help this reader? Post your thoughts below.

Continue reading "Friday dilemma: My dad’s a bad driver. Do I dob him in?" »

Last year, I resolved to buy a car.

My enthusiasm quickly evaporated, however, when I actually started poring through the classifieds and realised the whole thing was going to cost me a substantial amount of cash.

I also became terrified of getting stiffed by some crisp-collared sales-jerk or a bunch of snakes in a floral-print dress disguised as a sweet old lady.

Continue reading "Car free, carefree and in desperate need of a lift" »

Welcome to this week’s I Call Bullshit, where we arbitrarily pick a topic to have a crack at. Today, inspired by a Punch thread, we’re going to look at the stickers people choose to put on their cars.

Now I’ve previously expressed my hatred of stickers that pretend to be passionately patriotic when in fact they’re just racist. But this time I’ve undertaken a more in-depth scientific study of the chasm between what a sticker purveys and the actual truth.

You think a sticker will fool people into believing you are more than you are? I Call Bullshit. Here’s a few examples.

Continue reading "ICB: Do bumper stickers reflect the soul within?" »

So I’m on the train recently, and excuse me for being a busybody, but the lady in front, who can’t be a day under 75, is a reading a breathless novel about Rebbekah melting into the muscular arms of Storm. And I think to myself, “gee, I love public transport sometimes”.

The other day, I get off the train at Sydney’s Macquarie Park station. Right outside the station, two motorists are having a fist shaking match in gridlocked traffic and I think to myself, “gee I love public transport sometimes”.

November 2009. I’m in Melbourne for the golf, and I take the train to Huntingdale Station, followed by a free connecting bus to Kingston Heath Golf Club. The bus breezes through a special lane, while Tiger Woods is stuck in traffic, and I think to myself, “gee I love public transport sometimes”.

Continue reading "Most people who hate public transport are selfish and lazy" »

Some people really know how to land on both feet. Such as the three blokes who host the absurdly popular TV show Top Gear, who are paid a whole shed-load of money to remain in a state of arrested mental development and live out an extended midlife crisis on television, while taking the piss out of people of other races whom they find stupid.

It’s assumed that men everywhere adore this program, hence the preponderance of Top Gear DVDs taking pride of place next to the socks and hankies every Fathers Day. It’s also said that women like the show too, that there’s something of a raffish, knockabout quality to host Jeremy Clarkson and his crew which the ladies find endearing or even irresistible. I know a few blokes who enjoy (or enjoyed) the show, but I’ve never met a woman who claims to like it, and suspect the latter assertion is made by men who simply want their wives or girlfriends to endure their seven-hour-a-week Top Gear habit.

Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond will be heading our way soon on one of their “Down Under” tours. It’s a pity that they didn’t choose instead to take their show on the road to another southern nation, namely Mexico, which was recently the subject of one of their zany gags, and whose excellent citizens would probably love the chance to see these blokes in the flesh.

Continue reading "Is Top Gear the best children’s show on television?" »

Everyone should abide by driving laws but I reckon there’s a need for a guide to driving etiquette.

Is it just me or are drivers becoming more agitated, more selfish and lacking any respect for other motorists? They aren’t necessarily breaking the law, they just make driving more annoying.

Gone are the days when driving was a pleasure. Today it’s a means of getting from one place to another with the least amount of aggro.

Continue reading "A reasonable person’s guide to modern driving" »

MANY of us look back with fondness at our first car. An old, clapped-out, bomb that only just got you from A to B is the memory that comes to mind for most.

But as the Christmas holidays approach and our kids take to the road, is giving the kids the keys to the family’s oldest car good enough?

As Australia’s key road safety advisory body, the National Road Safety Council thinks its time we give our kids the keys to our Australasian New Car Assessment Program 5 star-rated car parked in the garage.

Continue reading "Parents, buy your kids a shiny new volvo" »

This column is proudly brought to you by BMW. Or Mercedes Benz. Or Holden (if I’m desperate).

Advertising and editorial – traditionally uneasy bedfellows – are having uninhibited sex at the moment. Instead of protesting, we media sluts have joined the orgy, legs in the air like frozen chooks (from Steggles, of course – Steggles for quality).

How long before we see newspaper stories headlined, “Tony Abbott surges ahead in the polls” (sponsored by Nutri-Grain – Iron Man Food).

Continue reading "Editorial content should not be up for sale" »

I was sitting at traffic lights the other day making my way to a gig in the Hunter Valley. It was lashing rain and the weather was terrible – you could barely see the road up ahead let alone the other traffic.

As I waited for the lights to change, a car pulled up alongside me. Glancing briefly to the left I saw the familiar P plate on the window screen. The car was a six-cylinder and the young driver at the steering wheel seemed far too eager to put each cylinder to use.

“Alright buddy”, I grumbled as I heard the intermittent and very familiar revving of his car, “hold your horses”. The lights changed and the young driver shot off like a bullet.

Continue reading "Too fast, too young - has teen driving become worse?" »

A strange thing happened when I became a parent. I started to get upset when I saw stories like the one of the five young men who were killed in a motor crash at the weekend.

I’ve also found myself saying ‘in my day’ or worse, ‘when I was young’. I’ve already made decisions about a computer in my child’s room and whether she will have a mobile phone.

Sometimes when the entrepreneurial gene comes out, I wonder if I could get a mobile phone made that simply dials home and does nothing else. I would market it as not having a camera or video function, wouldn’t be able to surf the net and it wouldn’t rack up bills of many hundreds of dollars. (That’s where the entrepreneurial gene fails me.)

Continue reading "Road deaths - statistically, boys, it’s not good" »

When it comes to the cars parked in the garages of our Federal parliamentarians, saving the planet for the kids and grandkids doesn’t get a look-in.

Our Federal MPs, apart from a few Opposition hard heads, for some time have been issuing worthy public words about the need for urgent global action to stop greenhouse catastrophe. As Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said earlier this month, referring to the need for his Emissions Trading Scheme to get through parliament: “Denying climate change is bad for our kids, it is bad for our grandkids”.

But it’s clear that big, Aussie-made, carbon fuel-gulping grunt that MPs from all major parties want to drive under a taxpayer-funded perk costing about $5 million a year. They want a big donk under the bonnet.

Continue reading "Pimp my MP" »

Last week I was bored to death reading coal industry propaganda and needed some inspiration, so I took $50,000 worth of new green technology for a test drive.

The Prius is the worlds first and biggest selling hybrid car, meaning it has both an electric motor and a petrol engine, which work in tandem to minimize petrol consumption. It also features a HUD heads up display, like in a military jet and solar panels built into the roof. If Captain Planet had a car, this would be it.

The market for hybrid cars is driven (sorry) by both Peak Oil and climate change. Peak Oil is the term for ecological limits as they apply to crude oil, or more specifically, the point in history at which oil production reaches a peak.

Continue reading "Volt heads can rev up, as I’ve test-driven the future" »

The world’s worst headline is widely agreed to be this rip-snorter from a brief which ran some years ago in The New York Times: None dead in small earthquake in Chile.

This column might be considered a belated shot at the title.

But setting aside from its decidedly unspectacular impact, it’s a story which says something about the way we live and interact in a big city like Sydney. It goes to the kind of entrenched bullying and brinksmanship which pits complete strangers against each other in all sorts of frazzled, sometimes deadly encounters as we try to get through our day.

Continue reading "None injured in small Sydney bus crash" »

Nothing screams erectile dysfunction as loudly as a diamond encrusted Rolex.

In my vast experience of travelling the globe, participating in royal activities, grand soirees, and through my exposure to the well heeled, I have come to the conclusion that it takes a certain type of man to sport a watch the value of which would feed several villages in the Sudan for years. As well, one would perhaps think that in light of the Global Financial Cock-up, those with fat wallets pillaged from haemorrhaging shareholders would catch on that discretion is the better part of valour – or at least, prudent during our Bernie Madoff days.

But these men are of a sad, and certain age, needy of ego and (I suspect) with erections propped up by Viagra and carbon based stones. Some have emerged from communist China with newly found capitalist bank accounts and they want everyone to know it. Occasionally, they are Hip Hop gangsta rappers who believe that extra bling will function as a light source if ever marooned in the wilderness. Certain Queensland property developers have also been known to sport the links of time & tack, co-coordinating their ensembles with white shoes.

Continue reading "An open letter to men with fast cars and fancy watches" »

Whatever you do, don’t watch the above ad before you drive home. You might turn into a maniac and start aiming at bus queues. Happily, the car advertisements of the not too distant future will feature a middle-aged dad in a beige cardigan and a mum in a twin set, and a couple of kiddies lashed into ergonomic capsules and wearing crash helmets for added protection.

They will be putt-putting along in the non-fast lane at 47kmh as the ad extols the car’s safety features and ability to get you from A to B. There will be no mention of how much fun the car is to drive, how it handles corners, how quickly it can go from nought to 100, how it’s got racy bucket seats, beautiful zippy lines, a cracker of a stereo or a monstrous donk under the bonnet.

Continue reading "In our dull Volvo world even ads come with safety features" »