Ben’s Car Blog

I love car magazines. I love free stuff. What’s not to love about a free on-line car magazine?

Winding Road is literally free, yet it’s a propper car magazine. It’s free because they have almost no distribution costs. All their costs are paid through their advertising.

WR focus on what could be loosely called drivers cars so the uncharitable could say that they’re avoiding things that they’ll have to say are awful. They’re based in the US so they’ll occaisionally feature things that people in the rest of the world don’t get (or are spared). I’ve often heard my US-based car-blogging friends complain that the US auto press are scared to say that “domestic” cars are any good or to criticise foreign cars, particularly Honda and BMW. The current issue of WR has a US v. Europe feature and if you think the results are obvious, it’s worth a read.

At the Melbourne Motorshow Ford Australia are previewing a bunch of interesting cars, all of which are enough to make Joe from My Ford Dreams green with envy.

First we have the Turbo Territory. 245kw or 330-odd horsepower in a BMW X5 sized urban assault vehicle. Why Ford North America dropped the ball on the amazingly dull Freestyle I don’t know. I can’t really see myself in a Turbo Terror but the press here thinks a reguluar Territory is a better can than an X5 so here’s hoping they sell a stack of them.

Memo to Ford NA: you want need the Falcon and Territory. If Ford.au can build these cars for the tiny Australian market (and teensy-tiny exports to NZ and South Africa) and price them well and spec them well (electrically adjustable pedals anyone!) then even if Ford NA have to re-tool a bunch of factories I’ll bet they’ll sell more Falcons and Territories than 500s and Crown Vics put together. (PS: our Fairlane is three times the car the Crown Vic is.)

Moving into cars that I’m more interested in, there’s the Focus XR5. Now that’s what I’m talking about! Who needs a Golf GTi?

Over at AusRotary there’s a great thread with a few pictures of 1960s and 1970s Japanese cars, most of which never made it out of Japan. Go on, have a look.

A couple of the cars in that thread are what I’d call “big iron”. More than 4 cylinders, fast and, well, big. In Australian terms most of the cars that we didn’t get (or at least didn’t get the interesting versions of) would be XP Falcon or EH Holden sized and intended for the top-end of the market. Things like Toyota Crowns, various big Nissans and so on. In the US these would be classified as “compacts”, I think.

At the other end of the scale are the things like the Cosmo Sports, the various Celicas (probably running interesting engines like 2TGs and 18RGs), the Belletts and the Lancer GTOs.

Oh, yeah. Ignore the first picture of the Alpine as that’s French.

Just thinking about a few things:

• Tarmac rallying, as currently implemented in Australia is a Bad Thing.
• What makes a car a “classic”?
• What gives a car “character”?

Oh, yeah. The thesis is with my proofreader and my supervisors for final checking.