Happy Easter, suckers. Yes, if you drive a car, everyone in every sector of government and industry has their hand firmly in your pocket/wallet/purse/online bank account.
At this week’s first hearing into Australia’s general insurance industry, senator Nick Xenophon said: “If you are a single male, own a red car and buy your insurance late at night, you’re pretty much stuffed.”
This came after senators were told insurance companies are charging owners of white cars lower premiums and will soon offer better prices to consumers who buy a policy in the morning, are married and vote Liberal-National Party.
Consumer champion Choice told the inquiry “home and car insurance remain two of the biggest cost-of-living concerns for Australian consumers”. “Industry reports are showing premiums are set to increase well above inflation and wage growth again in 2017. Consumers are being squeezed as premiums increase and policies become more restrictive. Major players in the insurance industry rely on a huge disparity in available comparison data and the creation of misleading market comparison websites to stave off competitors”.
Even when there is a comparison website, you end up being done over.
Daily Telegraph journalist John Rolfe found seven of the 10 car insurance brands on Compare the Market website (“we’ve got your back”) come from the owners of British-based website Budget Holdings.
Then, despite a Productivity Commission report showing that governments subsidising ethanol in petrol can increase fuel costs, may not help the environment and independent tests showing using ethanol makes you use more fuel, that petrol with ethanol decreases the life of the engine and its parts, that it takes more energy to produce ethanol than the ethanol will produce and that ethanol production competes with food production and so increases food costs, the NSW government has not only mandated service stations sell ethanol-blended fuel, it is going to run an ad campaign to tell you how good it is for you.
But lucky there is a silver lining because the stuff you are being forced to put in your car is the same stuff that goes into your drinks, which in low doses causes euphoria, reduced anxiety and sociability and in higher doses causes intoxication (drunkenness), stupor and unconsciousness. Clearly a lot of politicians and public servants have been getting stuck in at morning tea time.
In better news, there is some seriously good metal coming up in auctions over the next few weeks. Good things do come in threes.
At Shannons’ May auction you can pick up a Series I, Series II and Series III Mazda RX-7 coupe from the same collector for about $60,000 for all three. The early pistonless Felix Wankel-designed engine RX-7s were breakthrough rockets that often broke your pocket when apex seals went or if you drove more than 160,000km.
But when an RX-7 won the Spa 24 hours and a sort of RX-7 became the first Japanese car to win at Le Mans, everyone got religion. A lot of RX-7s were made but given these three’s condition and history they are probably good buying at the lower range of estimates. I would still look for oil on top of the engine as a red flag.
Talking of Le Mans, our LeMons race director Phil Alexander was the gun of rotary engines technicians and is now racing manager at the Weekend Australian Racing Team (WART). If you have a problem with one of the cars you buy from Shannons contact him at www.raceawaytracktime.com.au or this weekend at Bathurst, where he will be running around in a very quick Toyota 86 (the RX-7 of this decade).
Also in the six-hour race is time attack world champion and WART LeMons and Shit Box Rally transport consultant Garth Walden, in his frighteningly quick Merc AMG A45. Joining him this weekend is the world’s most successful Porsche Cup driver, Craig Baird, who unfortunately comes from New Zealand.
Look for Garth’s dad, Brian, in the Class B2-winning Holden VE SS-V Redline.
Somewhat like Bathurst but without the correctional centre or what in my day we called a jail, is Cernobbio, on the shores of Lake Como. RM Sotheby’s will be with me at Villa Erba next month to auction off the hypercar trinity. (Well it is Easter and we need to be somewhat religious.) Villa Erba was home to filmmaker Luchino Visconti.
As Henry Bacon rightly points out in his excellent book, Visconti: Explorations of Beauty and Decay: “Many left wing critics accused Visconti of formalism and not indulging in aestheticism”. I don’t agree with the communists but I am a huge fan of Visconti’s work because all his pictures have lots of good-looking people of all sexual persuasions with not much kit on.
Anyway, RM are auctioning a 2010 really beautiful Arrow Blue Porsche 918 Spyder, a 745 kW 2015 McLaren P1 GTR and Ferrari’s 21st century hybrid hypercar, the 2012 LaFerrari.
This is a shortened version of the original article – read the rest at The Australian
