1988 Nissan A31 Cefiro

[rohan]

It started raining quite hard soon after I took off, to the point that I pulled up in a slow vehicle lane on Gorge Road for a few minutes, as I couldn't see too well. It died down fairly quickly, and I went up and back on one of my favourite sections. With a cliff wall right next to the road, you get some pretty epic exhaust sounds when you put the foot down.

Since the roads were still quite wet, I was taking it fairly easy. But at the end of a gentle corner, I hit what must have been a patch of oil at about 50, and the car immediately snapped sharply sideways with no warning. With a rock wall on one side and guardrail on the other, I had to pull over a few minutes down the road to change my underwear.

[rohan]

Driving further on I stopped on a dead end road near Mount Torrens. They're usually better for taking photos, as there's obviously less chance of traffic.

[rohan]

With sunset fast approaching, I started to head back to Adelaide, stopping again between Norton Summit and Adelaide.

[rohan]

Daniel's daughter Ella was at the Women's & Children's Hospital, getting ready for surgery to install a gastrostomy tube, similar to my tube, but in her stomach. So after getting back into town, I clunked my way into the multi-level carpark and headed up to the wards.

[rohan]

For this hills run, I had my GoPro HD Hero camera stuck on the windscreen, taking photos at two second intervals for the majority of the driving.

This time lapse video consists of around 4500 photos, and condenses several hours of driving into a little over four minutes. You'll see me wandering around taking photos here and there as well.

[rohan]

The cycle continued with some more daily driving...

[rohan]

...which included a goods transport practicality test at Ikea.

[rohan]

After trying a few different spots, once we laid down the passenger seat, Sally and the Ikea guy managed to cram the box into the car.

[rohan]

Chicken and chips fit into the car with much less hassle.

[rohan]

Still entertaining the thought of changing my Buddy Club P1s to something in a mesh style, a few days later Prach and I jacked our cars up in his driveway, and prepared to do a front wheel swap out of interest.

[rohan]

Although I would want something with decent dish, and the size and offset were quite different, I thought it would give me a better idea of what that style would look like actually on the Ceffy.

[rohan]

I'd never had a really close look at Prach's wheels before, and just assumed they were BBS wheels, but on closer inspection it seemed pretty clear that they were copies.





With the front right wheel in place, it was much easier to get a clear idea of what they looked like on my car.



Visually they seemed to flow a bit better; the P1s are quite a dark colour, and don't come up that well in photos taken in sunny conditions. So while I think the P1s definitely make it look tougher, the mesh style rims would look better in photos.

[rohan]

Putting the Buddy Club wheel on Prach's Chaser, it really seemed to suit it well, with the stronger six spoke design making it look decidedly meaner.



With different widths and offsets, we weren't sure if the rims would fit the other car. They certainly didn't, to the extent that they fouled so badly on the suspension and brakes you couldn't even move them on either car. But it was interesting seeing the difference anyway.





Prach also had some other rims from somewhere, minus tyres, and stuck one on the hub since we already had the other one off anyway.



They looked very small, and when Prach said they were 18s, I didn't really believe him, but a tape measure helped put things into context.



Amusing wheel experiment over, we put the rims back on their respective cars and called it a day.

[rohan]

In the middle of September, one of my favourite motorsport events was on; the Classic Targa Adelaide. Under new ownership after some management issues, the name had changed. But the event was still the same concept; lots of expensive cars going fast on some of the best roads the Adelaide Hills have to offer.

Have a look at their website for more information: www.classictargaadelaide.com.au/adelaide/adelaide_home.html

It had been a very long time since I'd been able to attend any form of motorsport event, due to obvious health reasons. On Wednesday the 14th there was a prologue event taking place in the small country town of Tanunda, located north-east of Adelaide in the Barossa Valley.

I was feeling relatively ok in the couple of days leading up to Wednesday, so I tentatively made plans to go if I felt up to it. The prologue started mid-morning, which was a bit early for me, as it was the best idea to stay on my liquid feed for as long as possible to give me some energy for the day's activities.

Come Wednesday morning I was feeling able to go, and keen to see some cool cars, so at around 11:30 I grabbed my camera bag and headed out. Initially I was a bit hesitant about taking the Cefiro, not sure if it would be too obnoxious and uncomfortable for a longer drive on a highway. But since I was attending a motorsport event, I figured it would be more appropriate than a boring Commodore anyway.

On my way to the Port Expressway, this cool Toyota JZX100 Chaser caught my eye as I drove past, largely due to the nice rims, tough stance and custom plates; 'Nom Nom'.



I'd seen the car's rear from a distance a few weeks before, as you can see below, the boot lid is particularly distinctive.







The Chaser's owner was actually getting out of the car when I pulled up across the street, so I said hello and chatted for a bit about his car. Due to my photo spamming of multiple automotive forums and my distinctive car, he actually knew who I was, and his forum name was familiar from Nissansilvia.com and SAU.

After taking a few more pictures, it was back onto the road again.

[rohan]

It felt good getting the car up to 100, and then 110km/h once I'd made it out to the recently completed Northern Expressway. I thought the Ceffy was going to be a bit noisy and uncomfortable when I first set out. I needn't have worried. Although not as quiet as a standard Commodore, the exhaust sound was quite minimal considering how loud the car is.

I'd appreciated the side support of the Bride bucket seat in the hills, and as it turned out, it was good for highway driving as well. Since the roads were all quite good, the stiff suspension wasn't really an issue, and with the extra lumbar support of the seat, I actually found it more comfortable to drive than my parents' VY Commodore. With the flat and shapeless driver's seat, my back would tend to start aching fairly quickly from holding myself in place.

Turning off towards Tanunda, I stopped in a gravel area for a few photos. The green pastures and puffy clouds were quite a nice background, with trucks and cars passing by.

[rohan]

I continued up the road for a little while, and then pulled over again to photograph the scene on the side of the road; brilliant yellow fields of Canola stretching out towards the horizon.

[rohan]

The cool clouds made for a dramatic scene when I did a black and white conversion to this photo.



Crossing back over the road, I could hear a loping V8 in the distance, which turned out to be a Holden HK GTS Monaro. The pastel yellow paintwork looked pale in comparison to the eye-watering canola shade.

[rohan]

A few trucks thundered past as I waited to get back onto the bitumen.





Coming into Tanunda, I spotted the first of many competitors' cars; a nice green Holden LC Torana.



After going through some side streets due to the closed main street, I found a car park, grabbed my cameras and started walking into the town centre.

[rohan]

Nearby was this clean Mustang, complete with a soft toy version of the car's namesake on the rear parcel shelf.





This E36 BMW M3 had a far from subtle spoiler attached to the bootlid.



As I walked the couple of hundred metres towards the main street, competitor cars rumbled by to line up along the sides of the road. By the time I arrived the racing part was over, but I still got to hear all the awesome cars idling.

Visible in this short lineup (front to back) are a Mazda FC RX7, Porsche 944 and a Ford Escort.



A hot 964 Porsche 911. Now I'll do my best with correctly identifying the cars in these, but I can't be an expert in everything with such a wide variety of cars, so don't take the captions as gospel.

[rohan]

Rounding the corner onto the main street of Tanunda, I almost had to sit down as the scene came into view...millions of dollars of Porsches lined up side by side, for what must have been nearly 100 metres.



An angry sounding rotary engine from behind turned my head; the noise was coming from this early model Mazda RX7.



These tough 911s were close behind.