The world adores matt hayward

Those lucky Swedes and Scandinadians get to do it on icy lakes. Porsche and Audi will take their customers out on drive days on frozen Artic lakes. And with the help of our good mate Kevin Flynn, you can do it at the Police Training complex in Atwood. About 25 minutes from the Melbourne CBD. It’s the skid pan and it’s full of slideways goodness!
 

What is a skid pan you ask? It’s a concrete circle about 150 metres in diameter, kept wet with 90% water, 10% oil to keep that dreaded traction from kicking in. And because we don’t get black ice on call, the coppers decided it was imperative that they learn to drive a toey V8, rear drive pursuit car in slippery conditions. Coppers get to do it as part of their training in high speed pursuits. Some get to do it for education, and some crazy bastards get to do it for fun. The best thing is that the oil stops your tyres from frying and you loose virtually no tread whatsoever. But afterwards the oil all over the car looks like you’ve been through a bonfire in Baghdad.
 

There was a pretty broad spectrum of cars there: a twin turbo Supra, s13 Silvias, a few modded Skyline R33s and an S14 Silvia. Despite prior experience, everyone looses it and does the 180, occaisonally doing a few donuts to vent your spleen at stuffing it up yet again. It takes more than a few goes to get this right. Although most were modified, some of the best slides and sounds came from an automatic, non turbo S13 Silvia. So it’s not all about the grunt.


Letting rip in a car with Kevin, he whips any car into a centrifugal frenzy with pin-point accuracy. "Does your mum know you drive like this?" I asked, pinned with inertia to the B pillar. "Know? She taught me!" replies Kev’. I dunno what his mum was trying to escape from, but he’s learnt well, and so have I. He demonstrates a kind of no fuss, no worries ease that can only come from thousands of hours of practice. Yet still has you thinking "smart arsed bastard!". But he’s not cocky. He’s here to teach and by the end of the day, you end up learning a lot about throttle control and a lot more mindful about how good you really are when the slip hits the fan. Turns out practice really is everything. But thankfully, it’s a load of shits and giggles as well. When are they putting the skid pan into Gran Turismo 5? Kevin Flynn’s Driver Dynamics can organise a day on the skids for you. This day was on behalf of Nissansilvia.com and was something many of them came back a second time for. Given notice he can organise drive days for clubs, corporates or even car companies to flog their wares. Check out their web site and tell ‘em Crazy Bob sent ya. I can now finally vouch for how much fun learning to drive can be. And no mum. No one lost an eye.

I’ve had this phone for about 2-3 weeks now and it’s the most wretched, ill executed piece of shit ever to hit the GSM phone market. I’m pretty sure you could use two turds connected with a piece of string for a phone and end up with a better phone than this crap. At least you’d know you were about to put shit in your hands before you made a call.

First of all it doesn’t charge properly. When you plug the charger into the phone socket, that should be enough. Oh no, this is like finding the clitoris on a very disinterested girl for the very first team. But unlike clit finding, it doesn’t get any easier with practice. It’s simply impossible to charge. Knock it slightly and it will stop charging. Leave it for 2 hours thinking it’s fully charged and it hasn’t even started yet.

So it’s not reliable, but what’s the quality like. Well if you like CB radios, then you’ll be happy with the loudspeaker. If not, then it’s the big 10 4 for you rubber ducky! It’s squelchy and terrible.

Then there’s the real let down: it comes with RealPlayer. So cool! It can play MP3s and shit right?! Well don’t get too excited. For some reason, the two MP3s I uploaded (took rougly 4 mins per song over a Bluetooth connection) are about as loud as a librarian live on stage at Madison Square Garden. Radio is at least 3 times louder than your loudest MP3. And I was going to use this as an MP3 player. Screw that to buggery.

Now the ‘good’ stuff. The camera: useless for anything by MMS. Upload them to your PC and you’ll see how useless they really are. Visual radio? WHY THE FUCK DO I WANT TO LOOK AT THE RADIO? It’s a great concept but somehow I don’t want to be walking down the street staring at my phone because it’s ‘visual’ AND it’s ‘radio’. Movie editing? Totally and completely stupid.

Battery life. It chews through. Charging roughly every 1.5 days. IF you can get it to charge.

Forget this piece of crap. I’m tempted to ask Nokia to swap it for something that actually works properly.

Well, the corporates have done it again. Here’s Subaru’s latest attempt at punishing ardent brand loyals with plain ugliness

Sadly, I think that some wanker crashed a meeting Fuji Heavy Industries (Subaru’s parent company), probably from GM and said, “Hey! you’ve gotta make it look like the new SUV!”. Which kinda looks like this.

This comes at a time when Mitsu have recently released the Evo 9, which ditches the ugly corporate nose. But instead of things getting better across the board, they simply pass the batton to the next corporate schmo who goes and fucks up the next car. What’s next? Bentley will release an SUV at the insistance of some majority shareholder that ever car in the range now MUST be equipped with the same huge, ‘corporate face’ grille? Please someone stop this!

I’ve just taken delivery of a new xr6 turbo falcon and my god it’s fantastic. The power is beyond incredible. Equally bad the temptation to let rip with some power on oversteer. Picked it up a few hours ago and you still can’t get the smile off of my face. Done about 5o kms and it’s drank a quarter of a tank. Thank god I don’t pay for the fuel! More shortly.

OK. So I had a quick blat in the car last night and have a few things to say

Gripes
- the ‘Auto headlights’ setting? What the hell is that about? Sounds like the answer to a question that was never asked to me!
- some interior plastics like the stereo controls and door handles feel a lot cheaper and chintzier in the Mark II Falcon than its predecessor. Looks like cost cutting at work and feels dissapointing!
- WTF is with the manual gearshift??? I could house a small family between the throw between first and second gear! My left arm will definitely be catching up to the right arm in strength now! It feels like they could’ve made it a short shifter but thought ‘nah mate, this is a bogan car. It needs a big throw to make you feel like a maaaaan’. It sucks.
- You can drive it nice. But man does this thing suck back the juice. Many would probably find a V8 more economical!

Likes
- the Interior with it’s blue illuminated dials etc is COOL. It looks absolutely awesome at night.
- Dunno about the car pulling cleaning away in fifth gear, but it certainly does in third with the slightest of shudders
- ‘Lightning Strike’ silver is definitely the range topping colour.
- Ample torque a plenty. Plant your foot in any gear and you will get pretty nimble acceleration.
- Awesome exhaust note. Not far removed from a V8, though doesn’t quite have the burble and rumble to it.
- Has a slight blow off valve sound, but haven’t quite worked out the way to trigger/not to trigger it yet. Cop bait in the waiting!
- Driver’s seat is a lot more comfortable than it looks.