OK, I get it.
Today the diet that will change your life — but first the news.
As predicted, Ferrari won the Albert Lake Grand Prix from Mercedes. An Alfa Romeo caught fire during Melbourne’s peak hour rush on Monday. Alfas, favoured drive of the smashed avocado set, regularly go up in smoke, just like Lamborghini Aventadors, favoured drive of the kimchi, kale, quinoa and camel milk set and 2014 Porsche 911 GT3s, favoured drive of the schnitty, chips, gravy and spaghetti set.
Toyota is recalling three million cars including the hugely popular RAV4 SUV crossover and Corolla sedans, due to airbags that may spray you with killer pellets.
Volkswagen is recoiling after getting parking tickets in the US for storing more than 100,000 diesel cars it bought back. The city of Pontiac (no guesses there) has hit the owners of the former NFL palace, the Silverdome, for filling the stadium with VWs without a proper business licence. No one knows what will happen to the tainted, now factory owned, VWs in America. In Australia, we do. You just keep driving them.
Today, if you are in Fort Lauderdale, or Fort Liquordale as motoring writers call it, you’ll be able to pay about $1.6 million for one of the last Mercedes 300SLs to leave the factory. But I’d wait until May 21, when you can spend a mill to pick up the Canadian 1991 Grand Prix-winning Benetton driven by Nelson Piquet and Michael Schumacher. Be at the Bonhams Spa Classic sale with bank card in hand. Schumacher made his debut at Spa, where he qualified seventh, despite having had to learn the track on a fold-up bike because teammate Andrea de Cesaris was caught up in contract negotiations and was unable to show him around the course on four wheels.
You know what I’d do? Rather than buy either I would put my money into a 1990s BMW 318is for under $12,000. The prices of these very pretty cars are starting to take off just like the 2002s have.
Talking of BMWs, many readers (three), have asked what happened at Mallala racetrack on Thursday. But before we go there let’s get our new priorities straight. Co-owner of our very fast 1990 Beemer, Michael McMichael, the greatest BMW technician in Stepney, South Australia, has been on the 2-5 diet and has dropped eight kilos in two weeks. The 2-5 is amazingly simple and effective. This part-time diet that still allows you to eat chocolate cake yet lose weight has hit the headlines and taken off in a big way. Here’s what Michael does. For any two days of the week you drink either Coopers Sparkling or Pale Ale. Remember it has to be Coopers because it’s made by a doctor, so every glass is like drinking medicine. For the other five days, you drink 2012 Peter Lehmann’s Stonewell Shiraz. It has to be Lehmanns because Peter’s son Doug was a super driver and I think still holds the Collingrove Hillclimb record and it has to be before 2014 because that’s when the family sold the company to foreigners from NSW.
So yes, this time we did make it to Mallala, 60km north of Adelaide and home of the 1961 Australian Grand Prix. Lex Davidson was the controversial winner ahead of Bib Stillwell that year. This former RAAF base is the best community race facility in Australia. For $250 you can drive any car on the track for a day. The best part is the $250 includes all the Moccona coffee you can drink and a huge gourmet lunch. (Is this the one with 43 beans in every cup? Am I an advertising magnet or what?) Of course, as Michael pointed out, the only things missing are a few bottles of Coopers and Stonewell Shiraz to settle the nerves before you go back on the track.
Anyway, our Alpina engined Beemer is super-fast. However, we did find one small issue. Coming down the straight at 180km/h I jumped on the brakes before turn six only to find nothing happened. For non-motor sport readers, it is quite hard to go around a tight corner at 180km/h but the long grass and walls made of tyres are quite useful in slowing a car in this situation down.
This is a shortened version of the original article – read the rest at The Australian.
