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The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

Notorious BIG once said “Mo’ Money, Mo’ Problems”.  I suspect Notorious BIG has also never owned a 1995 Ford Fairmont with a 5 litre V8 with 23-year-old mobile sprinkler for a cooling system. But I understand the sentiment.

I have owned a bevvy of cheap old cars in my 25 years around the sun, including a 1996 Alfa Romeo 146 boxer, a 1994 Rover 220 GTi, a 1997 Subaru Legacy GT-B and a 1992 Mitsubishi Delica. My current curse is the aforementioned Fairmont with the 23-year-old, front-mounted, Niagara Falls feature. These vehicles have all caused me enormous amounts of financial and emotional strife, but if I’m totally honest; I love them for it.

                                                   “Red Keith”

I remember once when a few mates and I were driving from Sydney to a town that shall remain nameless but happens to be the “Duelling Banjos” capital of Southern NSW. My car at the time, “Red Keith”, was a 1995 Commodore VS wagon with a dodgy manual conversion and huge extractors. It was rough, but a lot of fun. 2 full playthroughs of the Bee Gee’s greatest hits into our journey down the deserted Australian outback roads, our clutch began to slip quite badly. We, of course, had zero tools, our phones were about as good as a small brick out here and not a soul had been seen since Night Fever. Put a man who drives a 2018 Lexus in this situation and what would they do? Panic. And quite rightly so. But not a man who is well versed in the art of having his cheap car break down on him in a remote location. No, we’re used to the chaos. We live for it.

Especially when you’ve got a Ver stashed away on your passenger seat. Ver is a friend of mine named after TV’s MacGyver for reasons that will reveal themselves momentarily. First, He diagnosed a faulty clutch plate. How the hell could he get parts for that out here? By sniffing through the chip crumbs and shoe sand on the floor of course! He came up with a broken set of headphones and some cigarettes. Ver slithered under the car while the rest of us went to see who could hit the fence post with a rock, first.

We couldn’t risk sitting in the car because our jack looked like it was built with the Penny Farthing and was about as stable. Even when the rains rolled in we stayed standing. With arms crossed and hoods up. Magically and by his absolute household engineering genius, Ver managed to replace some rubber by welding the old headphone leads in with the cigarette to get us on the move again. A truly heroic piece of roadside assistance.

                                                   “The Good”

After a few “hip hip hoorahs” for Ver and with our new found, yet soaked enthusiasm, there was nothing to do but venture into town stripped to the jocks. I can only imagine the nervous confusion going on through a farmer's head as these four city boys rolled up, soaked to the bone, in their underwear blasting How Deep Is Your Love? in a car that looked like it should’ve been crushed 2 years ago.

Now I love this story. Not just because I got to ride semi-nude into a town where cousins are potential senior ball partners, but because it’s got character. It’s unique. I once drove a V12 DB9 on my 21st birthday and the story was that I got to drive a fast car at high speeds. Congrats! So has every other person who has ever driven a V12 DB9. But you ask a man with an old Alfa GTV 6, or a Jaguar XJS V12 and I bet they’ll have a story for you. One that’ll have you laughing, crying, envying and sympathising with the storyteller, all at the same time.

                                                      “The Bad”

There’s a reason why police dramas like NCIS are considered trash. They’re about good looking, strong and charming characters do good looking, strong and charming things. Give me Harvey Keitel in Bad Lieutenant any day.

So, since breakdowns are pretty constant for me I have to disagree when Biggie says “Mo’ Money, Mo Problems”. Maybe what he means though is “Mo’ money, Mo’ boring”. Even though I am victim to the madness that is; I think the idea of having to put my heaters on full blast on a 33-degree day to act as extra cooling  for the engine is a good one, or when I just accept that I now have to enter my car from the passenger side door, or even when I downright embrace the concept that I now have to use a pencil for my window wiper lever, I love old clapped out cars. I always walk away from a bomb with a laugh and a good yarn to tell. How funny is a 7 grand Lamborghini clutch?

                                                      “And the Ugly”

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Life or Death

December 4th, 2018, 2:36 pm, Melbourne.

I’m sitting at a red light. I’m about to make a right turn immediately followed by a left a turn and I’m in the wrong lane. A tricky and awkward situation made all the worse by the fact that I’m driving a 5 tonne truck for work. My coworker, Peter, in the passenger seat leans out the window. He requests through gesture to a woman in a black XC90 that we’d like to cut across her. “She just sort of looked at me” he reports. “Well, I guess we’ll just have to go for it”.

I put on my left indicator and Peter sticks his hand out the window trying to make every possible warning of our questionable maneuver short of waving a flag. The lack of a radio combined with the ticking of the indicator makes the whole scene feel like a countdown. My foot is ready on the accelerator. I’ve driven this truck enough to know that once I mash the pedal the automatic Isuzu gearbox will react like someone who is desperately trying to recover their dropped vase before it hits the ground. The 6 cylinder turbo diesel in this truck is strong and powerful, but they are mated to a blind guesswork automatic transmission. I’d prefer they were mated to me but according to my boss, the clutches go too quickly on them. Fair enough. Giant go-kart it is.

The light goes green. I’m first off the line, but it doesn’t make much difference as the truck reaches 3 and half thousand revs and then spends 2 seconds searching for the next gear. I feel like someone at a busy airport looking for my ticket deep in recesses of my hiking bag at the front of an impatient line. I know it’s here, I’m just not sure where.

During this scramble, the XC90 nestles in about a quarter way up the truck. This position confirms that she has either not noticed the giant, smoke throwing, earth vibrating locomotive coming the other way on the tracks or she has just willfully ignored it.  Screw it. I give her a wee toot and swing the beast over to the left, forcing her to slow down and wait for me. The inevitable happens. “Hooooonnnnkkkkk!!!!!” I also see her pulling the fingers at me in my mirror.

It’s interesting the psychology of someone on the road. This whole altercation was my fault from the start. I was in the wrong lane. Fair. But I shield myself from guilt by making it very clear of my intended recovery. Meanwhile, this woman was acting like I had punted her child into the sea. I bet if I had cut her off while walking in the street she would have said “no problem”. But this is the road. A cutthroat place for cutthroat people. There are no mistakes.

I get it, too. From my experience with my old man’s V50, I know a Volvo panel costs your firstborn. Plus it is super easy to hate someone from a distance. It just drives me nuts that this is our accepted attitude on the road. I feel like I’m in North Korea. One mistake, one close call, one misspoken word about our dear leader and that’s it! Off to the labour camp with you!

Last month my neighbour yelled at me for about 10 minutes because he mistakenly thought he saw me creeping around his backyard at midnight. I wasn’t, but whoever it was jumped over the fence into my back garden. This action, combined with my neighbour being incredibly drunk, led him to believe it was me. I forgave him. In fact, I like my neighbour. I like him because the next day he realised his mistake and came over and apologised to me for falsely accusing me. We ended up talking about the fact that we were both big D’Angelo fans. We related. He’s young, he was drunk, fired up and he made a mistake. I’ve done the same and I’m sure the majority of you have too.

So just like an argument on the internet or an altercation on the roads, people feel a human disconnect with each other through the separation of our steel walls. I bet my left leg that, that lady has cut someone off in traffic by accident before and received the same treatment I did from her. And sure, if someone is speeding in a school zone or almost crashes into you because they were texting, feel free to call a dickhead a dickhead. But let’s all be a little more forgiving to each other as well. We are humans. We burn dinner, we knock over statues, we get mustard on our sweater, we cut people off in traffic, we make mistakes. Let’s not reconsider our opinion on the death penalty every time it happens.

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The 1995 Ford Fairmont Ghia

The Ford Fairmont Ghia EF-2 was released as a luxury car for the everyman. A man who wanted to cruise along on a cloud, while not being interested in the fancy doohickeys of the S-Class or the 5 series (or possibly not able to afford them). But who cares? Your dad had one and your grandpa loved his too. So, has the Fairmont translated well to the modern world after 23 years, or has it become another 90’s relic? I donned my Mambo shirt, slapped on some Pearl Jam and drove one for a week to find out.

Styling

The first thing you notice walking up to a 1995 Ford Fairmont is the undeniably 90’s styling. And by this, I mean it is absolutely devoid of any. If they used the Fairmont as an image on an eye test, chances are there would be no difference between the right and wrong lense. This car is round, fat and boring to look at.

One of the most “inspired” design cues is the absolutely flat boot. It is impossible to prove but I am fairly certain this came from an Aussie's need to have a surface to drink beer off wherever they are. It is too perfectly functional not to be.

The interior isn’t too exciting either. It definitely doesn’t have the cool or classy aesthetics you get from it’s German or British cousins, but it works. The seats are extremely comfortable and it’s reasonably equipped with a 6 cd changer and a smattering of fake wood. One thing I do love is the button cluster for the air conditioning. While trying to remain competitive, the team behind the Fairmont clearly didn’t have enough budget to design a complicated AC system, so they just came up with words for buttons that do nothing different. “Vent” seems to but the fan 0.5 setting and I still have yet to figure out what “Ambient” does.

There are only two things that really irk me on the interior of the Fairmont. One is the non-adjustable steering wheel which sits far too low for a 6ft2” man like me. The other is that when you’re below 80 km range in your fuel tank, the car beeps at you everytime you turn it on. This becomes very annoying when the slightly dodgy immobiliser makes you turn the power on and off a good 6 or 7 times. I know I’m low on petrol, that is what the fuel light is for!

In all, the Fairmont has nothing interesting going on aesthetically. That’s fine though as it is definitely a cheaper car than it’s more stylish counterparts and works well as an inoffensive taxi or cop car.

The Drive

The Ghia models of the Falcon line were down on power compared to their XR siblings thanks to baffling in the exhaust. They still aren’t bad though. The one I’m driving has the 5-litre Windsor which can trace its roots back to 1962 with the Ford Fairlane. It’s a good engine, mostly. It uses about a third more fuel than the inline 6 while only making 10 more bhp. Paired with a competent 4-speed automatic though, the Fairmont makes for easy overtaking and a very satisfying cruise. In all honesty, the V8 is a little pointless when the I6 delivers most of the advantages at less of a cost, but I still like it.

While the baffling definitely dulls it down, the V8 hasn’t lost all character and has brought a smile to my face more than once in the higher rev range. You won’t be beating many people at races between the lights but you’ll have a lot of fun doing it. It even chirps for when your inner 18-year-old is screaming out!

Handling-wise the Fairmont is surprisingly strong! Sitting at a whopping 1650 kg's, the suspension definitely has its work cut out for it and it performs remarkably well. Most other Commodores and Falcons I have driven from the 90’s are absolute boats. Now I must admit, I personally like a boat. Right up to the point when I’ve misjudged a corner and it wallows out like myself after a particularly hard session at Wagamamas. But the EF-2 remains rather composed even after 23 years on the road. It hasn’t lost its float and still makes me feel like a member of the Sopranos driving over to collect payment on that shipment of stolen watches, but it does so without trying to throw me out my open window at every turn.

So how is it?

By modern day standards, the 1995 Ford Fairmont Ef-2 is a slow, gas guzzling, rear wheel drive beast from a past era. And it’s great. I love cars from the 90’s for their absolute simplification of what makes a car good. There are no electric seats or funky lights in the Ford Fairmont. It’s just made to start every day, get you exactly where you want and do so comfortably with all the amenities you need. It shows in this day and age too. All the electrics (apart from the slightly dodgy immobiliser) in this 23-year-old car work perfectly, and I have never felt lacking with any purpose I ask it to perform. It’s big, it's got power and it’s comfortable. Exactly what is advertised on the box.

People love it too. I think every Australian has been in a Ford Fairmont at some point in their life. Your uncle probably owned one. It’s probably picked you up from the airport or dropped you at the police station. So there’s definitely a feeling of nostalgia there.

They last as well. You don’t see many 90’s 5 Series or S Class’s driving around anymore. If you do, please pray for the sanity of the owner and thank them for putting their mechanic’s kids through university.

The only thing that keeps it out of the public's hands nowadays is the engine. They’re super reliable, smooth and very cheap to fix thanks to parts galore, but they are thirsty. Driving the V8 an hour to work every morning cost me at least $10 a trip. You can do a little better with the I6 but it’ll still hurts your week’s budget.

So, if you’re looking for something safe, practical, cheap and big, get a Toyota Camry. If though, you are looking for something that does all this while also retaining its character and brings a little smile to your face, whip out your Australian flag, turn up Waltzing Matilda and try a 90’s Fairmont.

Even if you don’t like it, it’s a good place to drink a beer off.

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Hidden Gems

We all know about pre-PT Cruiser vehicular beauty queens like the Jaguar E-Type, the Ferrari Daytona and the DB4 Zagato, but not all lookers have made it into the history books. Possibly due to obscurity or being too “of the era” some cars it seems have fallen by the wayside. So here is my tribute to what I think are some of the most beautiful, obscure vehicles I’ve never seen.

Maserati Shamal

In the early 90’s Maserati’s styling was usually….iffy at best, and the performance generally followed suit. Obviously strangled by a ruthless budget, their line-up seemed to consist of different, uglier versions of the same car. The Bi-turbo was not offensive to look at but definitely lacked the charm and flare you’d expect from an Italian sports car. The Karif had interesting looks. Interesting in the same way as crash you can’t look away from is “interesting”.

But then, out of the darkness, comes the flagship. The Maserati Shamal. In addition to being the only Maserati of the time to use a V8 (while still using the Twin Turbo set up of the V6’s), but also the only model of the time that looked, well like a Maserati. With its hugely flared arches, short body and chunky rear end, the Shamal is reminiscent of the Delta Integrale but in a suit and with a silenced pistol in its pocket.

With only 369 produced, the Maserati Shamal is an obscure, and beautiful gem of the 90’s.

Monteverdi Safari

Jeremy Clarkson once said, “Alfa Romeos are designed to be the best car they can possibly be….briefly”. I fear the same is for most European cars. Take the Range Rover for example. A true work of art with amazing, simple lines and an engine note for the ages, let down by the constant mechanical gremlins that plague all British cars.

So how does one solve these wallet enveloping issues? By using a huge American V8 power plant of course! Hence we have the Monteverdi Safari.

Originally an International Harvester Scout from the USA, the 4x4 was redesigned in Switzerland (of all places) as a high-end SUV for the wealthy and affluent. While having similar lines to its pommy cousin, the Safari manages to have a more modern and sleek European look. All while having twice the power and reliability from a choice of either a 5.2, a 5.7 or 7.2 litre Chrysler engine.

Sure running a guzzler like this in Switzerland would probably cost you your house, kids, marriage and sanity, but then I’m sure the straitjacket delivery man would think you’re the coolest bloke on the block.

Gordon GT

It was really difficult to choose a picture of the Gordon GT for this article. The car is absolutely awe-inspiring from every angle. From the Catherine Zeta-Jones headlights to the private jet interior and the subtle and flowing rear end, the Gordon GT manages to be as close to art as a car can get.

The first car designed by Giorgetto Giugiaro (the man who designed the BMW M1, the Mk1 Golf, the DeLorean and the Alfa Brera) the Gordon GT only went on to create only 100 examples and never really took off. God knows why as the car used the 5.2-litre V8 drivetrain from the Corvette and made 300bhp in 1960.

The only unsexy thing is the name “Gordon”, but it almost works in its favour. Imagine hearing you’re going to be picked up in a Gordon, standing on the corner twiddling your thumbs, waiting for something like an Allegro or a Princess. Then suddenly, your jaw drops and your ears ring as this V8 monster you could’ve only dreamed of comes round the corner and roars you off into what can only be described as sensory ecstasy.

Who the hell needs an E-Type?

De Tomaso Longchamp

There is something hugely satisfying about a classically trained pianist or a full orchestra playing a down and dirty rock song. Taking something simple and fun that you would probably tap your fingers along to on the way to work and transform it into a true masterpiece that’ll change your view of the original forever. That is exactly what De Tomaso did with the Longchamp.

Another European design with an American powertrain (seems to be a bit of an unintended theme in this article), the Longchamp looks like the concept car for one of those huge ugly American sedan cars from the late 70’s before it was ruined by budget and chrome. And it’s a similar design too. Powered by a Ford small block making a very potent 330bhp, it’s rear wheel drive and it’s located somewhere in between the muscle and luxury car market.

Definitely more of a classically handsome car than a sexy one, the Longchamp scores points in its rugged simplicity. This car would look at home on the drag strip in Pennsylvania or an upscale restaurant in Milan.

I suspect the only prerequisite for driving one is a huge moustache to go along with your chest hair.

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The Fall of Subaru (as we know it)

There are some car companies that make me happy. Kia for example. A name that has been scoffed at and pushed in the mud for years, finally silencing the naysayers with the Stinger GT. A truly fun and cool car to combat the evermore boring and expensive Japanese car market. Alfa Romeo is another example. While always maintaining their reputation as sexy and exciting, they’ve recently lacked the performance of their competitors. A man that while draped in gold jewellery and Armani, you suspect may conveniently disappear when the bill comes around. But now that the Giulia is blitzing M3’s and RS4’s around the Nurburgring, it seems old mate has the wallet to back up his chains.  

Subaru is not one of these companies. Subaru always used to be a bit of an outcast. He didn’t wanna play rugby with the other kids at lunchtime and his mum always packed him weird foods for his lunch. But once you went over to his house, you realised he was quiet and disciplined because his dad taught him spin-kicks in the backyard, and that weird hummus stuff he eats? Well, it’s actually goddam delicious. Can I take some home?

Now though, Subaru has given up its unique charm in exchange for some beige slacks and a healthy dose of The Big Bang Theory. I’ll make an example of the Legacy. In the 90’s, while the base models were little more than boring but practical runabouts, the top end GT and GT-B models were absolute machine guns. My dad took me for a test drive in one when I was about 6 years old and I was scared to death. Scared, but in love. The car sticks to the road like it's on rails thanks to Subaru’s always awesome AWD system. But my favourite part of old Legacys is the engine. A fairly weak 2 litre with 2 beastly turbos slapped on bringing it up to 280bhp. A very average man, on steroids. There’s not much that can beat the sound of these engines, and one of the only things that can is the sensation it gives you. Thanks to massive lag, the feeling is comparable to hitting light speed in the Millennial Falcon. All the blood slingshots to the back of your head and you’re left questioning whether that truck you overtook ever actually existed in the first place. They were never the fastest on the road but they sure felt like it.

From the turbo’s and the AWD to the brutal hood scoop, old Legacy’s were constantly reminding you that they had one foot in everyday practicality and one foot in their rally heritage.

Not anymore though! I recently had a chance to drive a 2015 Legacy and there isn’t actually much I remember about it. It was just….boring. I do however remember that it looked like it had recently won the highly coveted Rental Car Styling Award and I also remember how it drove. The inline 6 was pretty good actually. Sounded alright and had plenty of torque. It was however mated to one of the biggest giveaways that a car company is going soft, a CVT gearbox. Oh, how I dread the CVT. Not since the introduction of paddles has fun motoring taken such a blow. It’s like you never sold the 50cc Scooter you had when you were 15, and instead, it just grew up with you. The interior I can’t even recall. I think it seemed tough and durable, but it wasn’t even interesting enough for me to register it. Old Subaru interiors were never beautiful, but they were at least interesting. “I like this turbo gauge and what mad bastard came up with this seat pattern?”. Modern Legacys definitely still have one foot in everyday practicality, but now the other is firmly planted in the grave.

The same is across the board I’m afraid. The WRX and the Forester have both lost their edge in trade for mass appeal. I actually quite like the Levorg to be honest, but for the sake of this argument, I’m going to choose to childishly poke fun at its name. Boo Levorg! Go teach a Potions class to Harry and the gang! (Seriously, whoever came up with that name should be fed to a dog of the same name).

In all, the car industry is on the rise at the moment. Cars are getting back to fun in all ways shapes and forms. With Tesla and the 2 cylinder Fiat 500 to the Ford Raptors and the Focus RS, but Subaru is taking a different approach. And maybe that’s a good thing? Maybe Subaru has grown up with its clients. To me though it’s like watching a rock star hanging up his chains and leathers for the mundane.

Look out, everybody! There’s a new Geography teacher on the scene and he’s having a tuna sandwich for lunch.

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The Toyota Will Vi: Not Subjective

I never really “got” the Mona Lisa. I know it’s a good painting by a very famous artist, but it just doesn’t give me that zing you get from beauty. That’s ok though! Art is subjective. That’s one of the most amazing things about humans is that we can all look at the same thing and elicit a completely different response or emotion from it. It’s a sign of creativity, individual thought, and intelligence. There is though, one car that lives outside our world of different tastes and opinions. A car that all would agree is not only ugly but an insult to any well-designed object on earth. This engineering feat of awfulness is, of course, the Toyota Will Vi.

 The Will Vi came about in 2000 after companies like Toyota, Panasonic, Asahi and others formed a coalition to sell products aimed at young adults, under the name “Will” (also the name of a big hairy friend of mine who drinks pints and plays pokies down at the pub). They brought out products like razors, beer and folding bikes. Toyota’s contribution, the Will Vi, seems fairly simple on paper. It’s a four door Japanese hatchback that uses the same 1.3 litre four cylinder and running gear from the Toyota Yaris, a boring yet understandably simple supermini. Even some of the quirkier things sound quite cool to me. A big hearty column shift, central dials, and best of all, a bench seat in the front, perfect for piling your mates into to take down to the rugby or for taking your girl to make out-point after seeing The Blob on the silver screen. Though, all these fantasies will fly out the window as soon as you set eyes on the Will Vi. If purchased, you realize that not only will you never get any new friends or a girlfriend, but that your current ones will probably leave you as well.

The Will was designed during the “retro styling throwback” trend of the early 2000’s which some companies did great out like Nissan with the Figaro or the Pao, and some companies did terribly, like Chrysler with the Prowler, and the universally hated PT Cruiser.

 The first thing you’ll notice is the reverse angled back window reminiscent of the Ford Anglia and the Reliant Regal from the mid 60’s. A styling cue that possibly should’ve been left there. Next, you will notice that the car seems to be made of three ill-fitting sections. One each for engine, cabin, and boot. The only word I can think of to describe these shapes is "random". It looks to me as though someone has taken a slice out of cake, then, sort of jammed in a bigger slice back into its spot and completely misshapen the cake. I don’t know why someone would do this to a cake, but sometimes intense ugliness calls upon a very specific simile

 . Once you’re bent over, dry heaving, but recovering from the barrage of unseemly sights, your eyes will be drawn to a subtle, but possibly the most deranged of the Will Vi design decisions. The big weird, I don’t even know what to call them….” half pipe lines” down the side of the car? My mind audibly fizzes and sparks trying to think of what clearly mad person designed this car. I will try to describe these…. tubes? Dents? Whatever they’re called, as best as I can. Imagine you have a fresh container of Neapolitan ice cream and one kid wants chocolate, the other wants vanilla and the last one wants strawberry. You run your ice creams scoop down each flavour for each child until you have three, parallel indentations in your ice cream. This is what the side of the Toyota Will looks like. It’s not for aerodynamics or extra space and it’s definitely not for looks, so I have to conclude that the previously mentioned mad designer had to share the ice cream between his kids the night before.

 It drives like every economical Toyota hatchbacks from 1985 - 2005 ever has. Automatic gearbox changes slightly too late as it gets worn out, but no other emotional responses apart from reliability and sensibility. The point of the car is it’s, or lack thereof, style.

 Look, I love innovation in cars, and taking styling cues from 60’s seems like a no-brainer, but c’mon Toyota. I know your cars sometimes don’t translate well culturally, and like I said before, subjection is great! But when everyone on the production line is wearing a paper bag, the car is literally only bought by people who are literally too old to see and I have to carry a bucket round so I’m not physically sick on myself every time I see one, that car is not subjective. That car is ugly.

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The Honda CRX Del Sol

If you’ve ever driven an Alfa Romeo, you know they’re special. It’s a cliche, but a true one. I used to own a little 146 with the 1.6 boxer engine and I absolutely loved it (until it decided to spit most of its diff and part of the gearbox onto my bosses driveway). It would buzz down the street like a mini WRX, cock it’s inner front wheel on tight corners, get me waves from other Alfa drivers (leather jackets, moustaches and all) and then I could chuck four friends in it and head up the coast for a weekend at the beach. A truly wonderful and quirky car. It seemed to achieve all this with no sign of actual performance either. Sure, the engine sounded good but it barely scraped 100bhp, and while the handling was awesome, it wouldn’t do me any good unless I was in the winding Italian countryside where this car was designed. It didn’t matter. Alfas of the 90’s were a drivers car, not a performance car.

I thought hot Hondas from the 90’s, bar a little soul, were much the same. Something fun to drive when you couldn’t afford a turbo or a V8. A co-worker of mine at a well known Wellington pizza place owned a Honda CRX Del Sol VTi-S. In Fact, he owned 2 of them! I hated both. I thought not only has this car clearly tried to deceive me by attempting to look like a RWD, mid-engined sports car, it’s also sacrificed any style or practicality in doing so! This car was designed by an idiot, for an idiot. The idiot, in this case, was Chris. Chris loved Hondas more than any other. The kind of guy who had an NSX poster on his wall since he was 4 and would aggressively dismiss any other car as “shit”. He was wrong about most things in his life, Chris. He was incredibly bossy, valued money over any relationship and by far the laziest worker in the restaurant. But since he was quite often the only other car guy on my shift and everyone else was terrified of him, we’d end up chewing the fat more often than not.

One evening, after another shift-long debate, he figured the only way to convince me was to get me into the driver’s seat of the Del Sol. So, once the lights were off and the doors were locked, I followed him down to a quiet spot, just outside of town to a long, open and empty highway for some danger-free blasting. My doubts were inflated at this point. I thought “you idiot, little cars like these are built for corners, not long Hollywood black tops into the valley”.

I parked up, he shifted over to the passenger's seat and I settled in behind the wheel. It felt good. The position was low and the controls had that 90’s, Japanese, Gran Turismo 2 feel about them. The gearbox was tight and the engine blipped freely as I dabbed at the peddle. Definitely, a car designed for the person on the inside. “Go for it” instructed Chris. I eased into first to get a feel for the clutch, then punched it once I was over 2000rpm. It was quick, but nothing crazy. I changed up into second, did the same and felt the same. It was at this time that Chris said: “Stop, stop, stop!” I eased off. “Watch the gauges for when to change gear. Watch the red line”. I gunned the engine back alive in second, this time keeping my eyes on the gauges.

This is when stuff gets freaky in a Honda. Normally you listen and recognise an engine has to change gear at around 7000 rpm and every instinct was telling me to do so. It’ll just explode otherwise, but Chris was giving me the Obi-Wan treatment; “No! Use the Revs AJ!”. So I stayed in it. We passed 7000 rpm pushing off into the great unknown. The engine screamed like nothing I’d heard before. I’d heard motorbikes and F1 cars accelerate like this but not a street car, not a Honda. I assume it’s what people feel like when they see a ghost; it doesn’t make sense and it’s breaking all your worldly rules of reality but, it’s there. The needle kept on climbing well beyond the point of logic as I could feel a black hole opening around us, bending our reality. As the car was approaching 9000 rpm, I could bear no more. Either me or this car was about to lose it and so I shifted into third. Back down to 6500 rpm.

Oh yeah. This was perverted, and I wanted more. The power delivery was smooth and it seemed to be the world’s most generous barman, with revs on tap. We were flying at about 130 km/h by now. If Chris minded, I didn’t notice. I was absolutely hypnotised by this engine. It was the child that holds its breath underwater 20 seconds longer than you thought humanly possible, then pops up with you in a panic going “what’s the problem?�� No problem Damien, you’re just a goddamn freak of nature is all.

We blasted on like a banshee through the night. 7500, 8000, 8500. 140, 150, 160, fully aware that the pistons in this car must be moving faster than 99.9999% of things on this planet could possibly move. What was this like? Death? An orgasm? Heaven? Hell? I didn’t know. I didn’t need to know. The feeling was enough. Just as I thought this car was about to destroy physics and send us back to 1955 Hill Valley, I changed up into fourth and eased off. I knew if I kept on it I would be all the way to 200 and then onto hell with Julian in tow.

“Holy balls!” I exclaimed through some manic laughter and between drags of the fastest cigarette ever smoked. I thought over the previous 15 seconds of my life/death. “You see now?” asked Julian. Yes, I do see now Chris. This is no Operatic Concerto like my Alfa, beautifully guiding you through winding corners with the girl of your dreams beside you. Or it’s not the awesome guitar riff that makes you laugh and smile as you chew jerky and burn tires in a Commodore SS. No. No this was death metal. This is the music you listen to before a fight, something to make you howl at the moon. This is the kind of thing you do when you wanna be bad to feel good. This is leather, whips and chains. This is awesome.

Everything else about the Del Sol is wrong: It’s hideous, they’re always in a weird colour, they’re slower and less practical than the Civics of this era thanks to its weird folding convertible roof and they were blatantly just made to chase the success of the MR-2. But that’s where the beauty lies in this car. Yeah, you’ll look like a fool in the parking lot or in heavy traffic, but once you unleash this thing on the open road or around a track, nothing can touch you. Not the guys laughing at you, not the girls ignoring you, not the taxman, not your boss, not that idiot with the blonde wig on the news, not your ex, not your lack of a vacation this year, not that tosser in a Q7 who cut you off and best of all, without even a hope of brushing you, not even your reflection. The Del Sol is your secret weapon, and it’s quite possibly a nuke.