Commodore

Mark Twain had the bizarre pleasure of reading his own obituary. It would be a salutary experience.

The obit for Australian car manufacturing, however, has the aspect of a soap opera. It’s been running for years with the same grinding inevitability and fading stars.

Rumours that the death have of those one-time Strayan icons –  Ford’s Falcon and Holden’s Commodore – have not in fact been exaggerated were confirmed today at the Detroit motor show. Once the champions in the two-horse race that was the local new car stakes, both nameplates will be sent to the knackery in 2016 (or at best be assigned to imported American models).

Continue reading "A race to the finish for Ford and Holden?" »

Bathurst has become a bland, vanilla, tedious waste of petrol. Let me explain by way of an anecdote.

In the mid 2000s, I wrote an in-depth Alpha magazine feature on The Super Cheap-Ass 1000, or whatever the Bathurst Race was called back then.

I was embedded, if you will, with one of the major teams. After practise one day, I rode back to town with the driver of the “B Car” (most big Bathurst teams have two cars. Officially, they’re both the same, but everyone knows the good drivers get the “A” car and the lesser drivers the “B” car).

Continue reading "Donutless: The pointless dehoonification of V8 culture" »