Good news about the subs in Adelaide. It should mean the Marshall state can afford to get Supercars back on the streets, restore the Classic Adelaide to its former glory and bring back carmaking.
Of course our person in the city that made the safari suit a worldwide fashion trend, Michael McMichael, has already come up with the kind of big ideas that have made the Weekend Australian Racing Team and Nude Royal Portrait painting so successful. A minute after Joe, ScoMo and Boris made the $100bn announcement the old bloke was on the blower with the angle.
“Ring your mates in private equity straight away. Tell them to forget the new US subs – we would have got a better deal on pre owned ones anyway and if drone air fighters are making piloted planes obsolete, drone subs will do the same.
Besides that the last time we built submarines in Adelaide it took 26 years for them to become operational and even then there were problems with the bows falling off and being so noisy you could hear them start up in the Ying Chow (try the stir-fried crocodile with snow peas) on Gouger Street. No we need to focus on the reconditioning of the old Collins Class Unterseeboots,” Mick said excitedly (for him).
“Look, they only build them in South Australia to get votes, so imagine if we reconditioned the Collins subs using iconic Australian parts. For instance, those 18 cylinder engines are expensive to run, bad for the environment and heavy. So we replace them with 18 Victa two strokes with one central pull start handle on the top of the conning tower. Now the Collins have always had trouble with the masts.
They were so badly designed they made the whole sub shake. Answer? Adelaide’s own Hills Hoist. The subs are out tracking crocodiles for the Ying Chow to stir fry for an ALP fundraiser when they see an enemy warship. Up goes the Hills Hoist complete with some wet undies and tea towels pegged on and hey presto the bad persons just think there’s been another flood in the Torrens and some proud crow eaters have lost their washing. Do you get my drift?”.
Anyway Mick has already registered the name and started a new website: Michael McMichael Motors, BMW and Collins Class Submarine Service and Official Painter of Nude Portraits to the Royal House of Windsor. Twenty readers, including eldest son Jono who wanted his name mentioned even though he has no clue about fixing Mazda aerials and one friend, I’d be ringing Mick now and getting in on this deal.
Remember the value of investments and submarines can go down as well as up and investors may not get back the amount they invested and can end up underwater. Past performance is not necessarily a guide to future performance. Based on our past performance even emailing us would be a huge mistake.
Talking of huge mistakes, the biggest of all would be to see the Hamo/Mad Max crash as the biggest story of last weekend at Monza. Ricciardo’s win was no fluke and certainly not the outcome of the latest chapter in the most bitter driver feud since Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber; Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost; Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg; and the most expensive to date, Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso.
Whatever happened to Dan on his two-week break, it gave him his first win in three years and McLaren its first in nine. And his McLaren was only the third fastest car on the track. So what about the crash? It was the second this year but unlike Silverstone one of them came within a few centimetres of death. If you go to the Fox Sports F1 website you’ll see new footage of the wheel of Max’s rear right wheel run over Hamo’s helmet.
Both had crook pitstops. Hamilton was coming out of pitlane trying to get to the next corner in front of Max. Hamo was slightly ahead and looked like he was leaving enough room but as they turned Max was squeezed and rather than head off, put his foot down, went wide over the kerb which launched him over the top of the Mercedes. Now the bunker decided Max was in the wrong but there’s plenty of others who say it was a racing incident. Whatever it was, when Max clambered out of his car he didn’t bother to check if Hamo was alive and didn’t inquire about his welfare.
That’s what deserves a penalty.
Talking of Mad Max you can own 13 of the real stars of Mad Max: Fury Road. Problem is you have to buy all 13 together from Lloyds Auction, but given the coming Armageddon (the last battle between good and evil before the Day of Judgment) this is probably a good thing. And more use than a Collins Class submarine with a Victa engine and a Hills Hoist mast. In praising George Miller for making Fury Road and the vehicle scenes, legendary director Steven Soderbergh told the Hollywood Reporter: “I don’t understand how hundreds of people aren’t dead”.
My fav is the Gigahorse: ‘‘A pair of 1959 Cadillac Coupe de Villes in flagrante delicto are split, widened and mounted one to the other, pitched at a rakish angle by huge double rear wheels and powered by twin V8’s slaved to a handmade gearbox capable of harnessing and harmonising the ultimate power of the ultimate leader. The flagship of the Citadel’s Armada, The Gigahorse is memory of past glory and pledge of future victory’’. Armed with whaler’s harpoon and the devil’s own flamethrower, The Gigahorse is likely the first thing you hear and the last thing you see on the way to the Russian GP at the Sochi Autodrom Sunday week.
But nothing can compare with last weekend’s Leyburn Sprints. If you haven’t experienced round the town racing it’s like Supercars on the Gold Coast except it’s in a town of 460 people with hay bales, a few concrete barriers, two hundred cars and 16,000 punters trying to drink the town dry. Warwick Hutchinson in his Mazda rotary-powered OMS28 pipped Brett Bull in a Van Dieman single-seater. Dick Johnson and Ross Stone both went back to basics in a 1922 Wikner Ford Special that they assured me was not an effort to bring down the cost of racing.
Prizes will be awarded next week in the getting the radio to work in a Mazda 6 competition.
[email protected]
