"I think I can smell exhaust fumes and I feel like the heater is on," I said to Michael (The Sultan) McMichael, my Adelaide Rally co-driver and author of the new bestseller Sex In the Afterlife.
"Yes, I put a new exhaust system on to make the car go faster", Mick replied. Of course, he was referring to the Weekend Australian Racing Team's 1990 BMW 3 Series, which, for newer readers, is a supercar hidden away from prying eyes and criminal gangs in a shed in the Adelaide Hills which Brownie, the very large common brown snake and second most venomous land snake in the world, also calls home.
When your heroic duo go to pick up our rally car we yell "Brownie" through the shed door, leave the door open, run away to the nearby Cudlee Creek Restaurant, Tavern and Caravan Park for a few Coopers ales and hope he has left by our return.
This all happened last Wednesday at the start of the Adelaide Rally, a four-day event held within the Adelaide Hills, Fleurieu Peninsula and what passes for a CBD. Despite a distinct lack of support from the Steve Marshall-led fascist state government, which violently opposes motor sport, cars and hydrogen plants, the rally brings hundreds of millions of dollars, wealthy competitors, their families, friends and servants for 34 closed-off road stages, massive spending in bushfire and COVID-affected towns and businesses in what is the largest event of its type in the southern hemisphere and the afterlife.
"But Sultan, isn't this the gas that makes you go sleepy, lose control of the car and drive like an SA Liberal minister?" I naively asked Baron BMW. "Just wind the window down and you won't notice a thing." "But it's raining." "Person up. The rain will keep you awake."
Ironically, the first stage on the first day was up Scott's Bottom. Just west of Dorset Vale, the road snakes up 4.5km letting drivers and navigators warm up for later sections that saw some Porkers and Evo hit 220km/h. Quite a few competitors found new ways to park their cars during the faster parts of the rally: high up embankments, wedged in trees and in the dead cockroach pose position. Now you can see the value of my advice to those wanting to take up motorsport: only rally or race what you can afford to write off.
Meanwhile a problem for wealthy soapdodgers is already an issue here in the colonies. English plodsters arrested a gender-balanced (nine men and women) crime gang who allegedly knicked 70 Range Rovers worth over $2m by relay attack. These days the villains use scanners rather than coat hangers to steal cars. They pinch the security signal from your keys, march into the car port and march off with your Toorak Taxi.