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Date:         Mon, 21 Oct 2002 11:42:21 -0400
Reply-To:     David Beierl <dbeierl@ATTGLOBAL.NET>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         David Beierl <dbeierl@ATTGLOBAL.NET>
Subject:      Re: some notes from counterman mag
Comments: To: Kenneth Wilford <kenwilfy@COMCAST.NET>
In-Reply-To:  <92a44f7b.4f7b92a4@icomcast.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed

At 08:15 AM 10/21/2002, Kenneth Wilford wrote: >considered a good deal. He said that you would be amazed at some of >the really old cars that are still on the road, yet kept in good >running condition. It is just too expensive of an investment to buy >new. Any Australian list members, please comment.

[Rushing in where angels fear to tread <g>] When visiting in Oz (Melbourne area) and NZ (Wellington and Auckland) in '85 I saw lots of brand-new-looking cars in Australia that looked like old US models, including some that were surprisingly reminiscent of '57 Chevy. My hosts (computer company) said that old GM sheet-metal dies were shipped to Holden in Australia and used there. The car I hired incidentally was a Holden Gemini -- in this country we would have called it a Chevette. It and I both survived my only other-side-of-the-road driving incident -- on the way in from the airport I made one full revolution of a roundabout -- in the wrong direction. This attracted attention.

My hosts in NZ told me "this is the land of old cars" and indeed I saw a lot of old cars there. My hire car was a Toyota Corolla with no -- none, nada, zip emissions controls and a manual choke. Looking into the engine compartment reminded me of looking into a two-cycle Saab 96. There was so much empty space in the engine bay that at least in retrospect it had that same feeling of looking way down to a tiny little engine even though it was a 1600 or 1800 cc motor. At that time Toyotas were selling poorly in NZ due, my hosts told me, to a problem a few years previous where an engineering change in the protective coatings on body panels being shipped to the local assembly plant wasn't communicated properly to said plant, resulting in a big batch of Toyotas from which all the paint fell off.

Among my many fond memories of NZ (in OZ in midwinter I was working dawn to dusk and hardly saw the place) was trying to get some lamb to eat. My hosts were scandalized -- wouldn't do it. "Poor people eat lamb!" they said. They said Regular Folks eat beef and when they were eating high they'd have pork. Looking at the numbers later (3 million people, 40 million sheep, 10 million cattle and 150,000 hogs) put some perspective on this.

Some different perspective arose when they had a hostage situation while I was there -- a man holding his wife hostage in a car was killed by police either just after he shot her or because they thought he was about to. The newspaper had a very alarmed editorial and pointed out that seven poeple had now been killed by police -- since 1955 or thereabouts.

david

-- David Beierl - Providence, RI http://pws.prserv.net/synergy/Vanagon/ '84 Westy "Dutiful Passage" '85 GL "Poor Relation"


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