Look, let’s cut through all the crap. The only reason to choose one kind of a car over another is the way it makes you feel.
Of course, there are exceptions. No one serious would buy a Tesla, hybrid or any other vehicle that doesn’t make a noise all the time. And, of course, the kind of car you buy is situational.
So, the Ford Mustang GT fastback with a V8 and manual gearbox is great value at $60,000. It does attract attention, particularly in the more subtle colours of triple yellow or race red. But it’s not the car for residents of Peppermint Grove, Toorak or Point Piper. Rather than saying you’re incredibly cool, it signals you are incredibly crass with no taste.
On the other hand, last year I paid Hertz $700 a day to drive a Hertz Shelby GT Mustang (black with wide gold stripes) around Miami. I stood out and so fitted in perfectly. Miami is a city in Florida where people with lots of money either go to retire or buy cocaine and have parties, or both. It was created for the 1980s television series Miami Vice where two men of diverse ethnic backgrounds wore white Armani, Versace and Hugo Boss suits with rolled-up sleeves and matching white shoes with no socks and drove a matching white Ferrari.
The leading person, Sonny Crockett (played by Don Johnson, a world powerboat champion), was an undercover detective who, as many of us do, lived on a yacht with his pet alligator Elvis.
Cruising along Ocean Drive, South Beach (or SoBe as Don and I call it), it was not hard to see why Brooklyn Pedantic Magazine reporter Melissa Hitchen called Miami “a cultural and intellectual desert”. Clearly Melissa hasn’t been to Surfers Paradise, where a triple yellow Mustang would be viewed by the local elites as an important objet d’art.
So, this year I couldn’t keep away from that other centre of the Donald Trump cultural renaissance, Las Vegas, where Shelby American is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Super Snake Mustang by launching a wide bodied, 560kw, lightning blue with wide Armani white stripe concept road and track, legal, low-flying jet. The first Super Snake was developed as a Goodyear promotion to show that its thin white wall tyres were good for 273km/h.
Sales manager Don McCain convinced Carroll Shelby to stuff the 450kw race engine from the Le Mans-winning GT40 into one of their Mustangs and Goodyear was very happy. Don then wanted to sell the cars for $8000 each, or half the price of a Ferrari 1967 330 GTC, but there were no buyers. Four years ago, the original Snake sold at auction for $1.6 million.
The new Snake is a real bad boy/girl/person or both but Shelby hasn’t yet decided to put it into production. But if it does, it should be very reasonably priced at about $100,000, only 500 will be built and it will do the standing 400 metres in the same time as a Ferrari, McLaren or Porsche Turbo S.
Talking of centres of cultural renaissance, there is a lot going on this weekend. Out at Eastern Creek, where the aromas of objets d’art rotting in the tip over the road outsmell even the racing fuel, catch WART LeMons team driver Dean How in his 1981 BMW 635csi in the Sydney Classic Speed Festival. If that’s too big for you, head out to Hay, NSW, for the Hay Mini Nationals. Let me just say that having experienced the hospitality of the local people during a rally where 400 maniacs in 200 shitboxes descended on this great town some years ago, you have to be there. Another reason is it’s the only “but wait there’s more” — there will be over 100 Minis, a quiz night, a Motorkhana, a fancy dress party where our own Mark Southcott will come as a yellow Moke and, best of all, a free bus to help you beat the alcohol, drug and fun police.
On the other hand, if you speak French and know what objets d’art are of course you’ll be in Montreal for the F1, where Honda surprised McLaren chief Zak Brown by not introducing an engine upgrade that guarantees McLaren will continue its worst F1 season in history. Fortunately, the Isle of Man TT series finished yesterday with only three racers dying. Since the race started in 1907, 146 people have been killed.
Finally, two things to add to your calendar. Next week the 85th running of the Le Mans 24 Hour Race. This is not to be confused with the real 24 hours of LeMons in which your Weekend Australian Racing Team will be seen in what passes for action at Wakefield Park in October. In the pale imitation race next weekend, local interest will centre on Australia’s youngest-ever Le Mans entrant, 20-year-old James Allen, in the Graff Racing Oreca 07, Ryan Briscoe in a Ford GT, Nick Foster in a Porker and some New Zealand persons driving other cars.
This is a shortened version of the original article – read the rest at The Australian
