I can’t vouch for the rest of the paper but at least you won’t catch much here.
OK, lots of shock horror today including a surprise winner in the Car Of The Year; outrage over Australian government’s refusal to bring home our most famous car; an Australian F1 without Ferrari?; an 800 volt Hummer; a 480kW proper Porker; our readership jumps nearly 20 per cent and car sales down 96 per cent in China with sales down over 100 per cent in Wuhan where Zhang Wei, boss of Baoze Liancheng Used Car Dealer Co., Ltd., tells us: “Johnny, the punters just aren’t leaving home, we’ve tried the free BBQ, the balloons for the kiddies and I even imported 10 4m Advertising Sky Inflatable Tube Men Air Wavy Wind Dancing Puppets from Car Megamart in Pakenham but not a bite. Things are really crook here on Yanjiang Road. I hate to say this to you Johnny but we might have to sell electric motorcycles. How will that go down with your readers?”
Like a lead inflatable tube person Wei, that’s how.
Outraged Australians have started a petition to get the government to bring the Mad Max V8 Interceptor back to this wide brown land. Street Machine and Unique Cars’ Dave Carey got the petition going. Now this could be a harder ask than Dave and other outragers know. Not just because the Feds don’t see cars as art, antiques or even important but because the Pursuit Special (aka a 1973 Ford Falcon XB GT) driven by Max Rockatansky is for sale at Florida’s version of Baoze Liancheng Used Car Dealer Co., Ltd., the Orlando Auto Museum. What you and I would call an Auto Museum differs from what owner Michael Dezer has in mind when he named his 1500 car dealership a Museum.
What we can exclusively reveal today is that Mick is Donald Trump’s business partner, building more Trump Towers than Zhang Wei sold VW Lavidas and Wuling Hongguangs in the good old days BCV. Mick and his son Gil like the Trumpster so much, a bottle of Donald Trump: The Fragrance graces their desk. As Gil told a local real estate mag: “I sometimes spritzes myself before a meeting, if I need to smell good.” But four years ago, things weren’t that cosy. According to deposition transcripts the Miami New Times obtained, Mick said he avoided building a personal relationship with the Donald over the many years the two worked together. Why? Dezer testified he was afraid Trump would ask him for cash.
“Donald Trump was also my associate for many years, and we didn’t want to talk personal because I was afraid he was gonna ask for money,” Mick told Miami-Dade County prosecutors.
Mick paid $36m for the old Artegon Marketplace shopping mall which had been on the market for a year. Plans for the site included the 1500-vehicle museum, a bowling alley, a go-kart track, a trampoline gymnasium and a five-story apartment block with 365 units. Building has been a bit slower than anticipated with Orlando city officials saying the work was illegal, unsafe and other stuff like that and hitting Mick’s company with stop work orders on the mall and fining $280 a day.
Anyway, the Interceptor also made an appearance in Mad Max: Fury Road and was later modified into an off-road bare metal version called the Razor Cola. After Max’s family is killed by the Toecutter’s gang, Max steals the Interceptor and uses it to track down and eliminate members of the gang and Toecutter himself, as well as Johnny the Boy. Max then drives off into the Wasteland aka Canberra.
In an enormous rearguard action to suck up to the mainland, The Interceptor of the year in the northern hemisphere is the Peugeot’s 208. Sixty Euro judges gave the de Gaulle special the gong ahead of Teslas, Porkers, Beemers and Renaults.
To give you the actual words the judges used, despite the Geneva Motor Show, where the announcement was to take place before being shut down because of CV: “The new 208 has been highly demanded since its very introduction in the market because of its style, functionality, efficiency and value for price. Just one 5-door body offer, yes; but diverse and well-spaced trim levels, nice petrol and diesel engines and, most of all, the aura of a full-electric version for which its platform had to be readied since the beginning of development. The e-208, therefore, has the same room and luggage space than its thermal-engine siblings.” Well there you go.
And in better news, readership of this column has soared, adding two more readers this week. Dave Hosking wrote to me saying: “Tell your editor that all of the male population in this rural area reads your column each Saturday (me and neighbour) before scanning the false news and media hysteria/ego massaging of the rest of “the Weekend Oz”. And, significantly we share your love of Coopers (Ultra Light: the drink when you’re not having a drink) and disdain of two wheel motorised transport (with such high mortality and serious injuries, why aren’t they banned? More dangerous than corona virus!).” Well said Dave.
Look GM is building a giant Hummer SUV with 800-volt architecture with a lazy 750kW horsepower and a zero to 100km/h in 3.0 seconds. But the good old folks at Stuttgart have blown that out of the water with the new Porker 911 Turbo S. It’s petrol, it’s 450 kilowatts, it’s turbocharged and it gets to 100km/h in 2.5 seconds. A snip at around $450k.
[email protected]
