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Tuesday, October 26th, 2004 10:57 am
Last night on Top Gear the Vauxhall Holden Monaro was deemed deeply desirable. A 5.7l V8, rear-wheel-drive muscle car, coming out in the UK for around £33K ... It was doing 60 at 1500 revs ... I've driven cars that would stall trying to do any speed at revs that low ...

Not ideal for town driving, admittedly, but for petrol-heads living in the city, who only drive when they've got long distances to cover ... (They also liked the S-Type R, but it cost about 10K more. The evil Chrysler 300C Hemi was judged a near miss, due to poor ride and iffy brakes.)
Tuesday, October 26th, 2004 03:51 am (UTC)
[FX: happy petrol-headed grin]

Such footage I've seen from Mt. Panorama just pisses on any UK racing. (With the possible exception of Irish rallying)

I vaguely recall that there was a SA version of the Grandad with a V8 motor. One of those would be fun to keep.
Tuesday, October 26th, 2004 03:56 am (UTC)
There were even Sierra and Capri V8s from Seeth Efrica.

The Beeb used to show Bathurst every year in the 80s (for a while the Europeans went there regularly, so as well as the Aussie heavy metal there were works BMW 635s and Tom Walkinshaw's Jag XJSs, weird stuff like Eggenberger's turbo Volvo 240s (imagine a Vogon Constructor Ship on wheels...) and then the RS500s...) but there were so many baccy ads around the circuit, on the cars, painted on the dashboards, and even scrolling around the screen, that they stopped. Bloody brilliant, especially with the hysterically funny local commentary.

They showed it a couple of times when the Aussies were trying Super Touring for a couple of years, but whingeing little 2l repmobiles didn't look right round the mountain!
Tuesday, October 26th, 2004 04:04 am (UTC)
The Australian Falcon from 1979 to 1986 was pretty much based on the UK Granada. Except with twice the engine, of course.
Tuesday, October 26th, 2004 05:39 pm (UTC)
When did you turn into a petrolhead???????
Tuesday, October 26th, 2004 11:41 pm (UTC)
One picks these things up by osmosis. You know that!