Barry

FJ Cruiser?

Senna was a hero of mine when I was a kid. I can remember Ayrton Sennas Super Monaco GP2 coming out on the Sega Master System. I lost a lot of hours playing that. Theres a nice viral video going around at the minute where there is an accident in a F1 race. Senna stops his car in the middle of the race, gets out of his car and holds the other drivers head up until the medics get there. I’m sorry I didn’t save it. When we’re on the topic of F1, I’d like to throw Niki Lauda into the mix. Almost burnt to death and 6 weeks later was back out racing again. I love watching recent interviews of him. He doesn’t give a heck, just tells things like it is.

Does anyone still read magazines and if so, which ones and where do you get them? I love reading stuff on the internet but back in the day, magazines used to be a real event. You waited a month for the next issue, made your way to the nearest town to pick them up and spent the next 2 weeks sitting on the toilet reading them, staring at the pictures and picking up as much information as you could I used to buy Max Power, Fast Car, Cars and Car Mechanics, Classic Car, Auto Trader, Classic Ford, Fast Ford, plus whatever else I could get my hands on. I started collecting around 1994 and built up a pretty respectable collection including lots of obscure French, German and Japanese stuff. I gave them all away when I came to UAE though. The only one I’ve really seen freely available here is wheels and I didn’t find it too impressive.

Have you seen the KITT vs KARR episode? My favorite 80s car has got the be the General Lee from the Dukes of Hazzard. I grew up on the stock car scene so it is king to me. I even put the same air horn in the first Ford escort I had. If I had a dirham for every time I launched off a jump and hit the air horn, I wouldn't need to work in Dubai now 😂 i also loved the a team van. I used to scoot my toy one round the floor and scare the shit out of the cat. Mr T was a bad ass mofo.

If you just want an oil change then anyone can do it. Just stick to the Mazda service schedule. Use 10w 40 semi synthetic and you'll be good for another 10k km. Id recommended learning how to do it yourself. It's easy and it will save you a lot of money in the long run. There are many mechanics who post on here who can advise you. Watch this and see how simple it really is with minimal tools.

Any discipline, F1, rally, short circuit, touring car, NASCAR, whatever. Mine has got to be Simon McKinley. He annilated all the competition on the Irish hill climb circuits for years. Sadly he was killed a few years ago in an accident in a formula style single seater on a hill climb. I always wondered how he could fit into a bucket seat with balls so big. Anyway, here's a video of him in his famous white Mk2 Ford Escort running a Millington Diamond engine.

Can you supply some details of the track? I’m not tied to the autodrome.

A few years ago I came across a video of a guy revving the jingle bells tune on his car. well apparently it's a real thing in japan

Just trying to gauge some numbers. How many people would be interested in a mini kart race series at Dubai Autodrome? Not a full race series, just like a 2 hour tournament. If enough people are interested, I'll try to negotiate a reasonable rate with them and organize it.

A big part of the problem is that hot hatches were never really marketed here. Let's just take one manufacturer for example. Honda. They built the Civic type r and the integra type r. Civic type r is world famous. The integra was considered one of the best handling fwd cars ever alongside the peugeot 306 gti-6. I've driven all 3 and was suitably impressed. But how many people in UAE know about these cars? And how many are on the second hand market? Sure, there's the odd Filipino guy who sticks type r stickers on his 1.8 civic but where are all the real hot cars? The brainwashed sheep are plenty to blame along with the manufacturer. lets go retro into the mix, Toyota Corolla gti or ae86 as the kids call it now. Huge all over the world. But crap. 1.6, rwd, but had lsd. Massive in Ireland since they were released. Everyone knew they were fun because they were marketed properly. Now the kids in UAE want them because they have watched initial d anime and seen keeichi tsuchiya in YouTube videos. But they were never marketed here.

I disagree that no one outside Europe gives two hoots about hatchbacks. UAE is full of hatchbacks but it's all small engined, generic Jap crap. What I would agree with is that no one outside Europe gives two hoots about hot hatchbacks. And the simple reason for this is the price of petrol. A liter of petrol in UAE is 2.20-2.30. Go to Europe, a liter of petrol will cost you maybe 7-8 dhs. This is why these cars are popular in Europe. Light, fast, economical and fun to drive. Europeans come here and realize they can run a Mustang or Camaro and do burnouts and donuts for what it costs to run a Citroen Saxo VTS or a Peugeot 106 GTi at home. Then there's the lack of dealer support. Honestly, French car dealers here suck. If you have to wait 2 weeks for a part, then you tell all your friends, that's the dealers reputation ruined. All because they wanted to save money by putting parts on back order rather than just keep some stock. Peugeot have built some fantastic luxury sedans, the 607 for example. The reason cars like this never took off here is because people are brainwashed into thinking if it ain't jap, it's crap, so these cars don't even come onto their radar. Oh that's nice, but I'll buy the Camry, my friend says it's good. Look at the 406 coupe. Thing of beauty, designed by pininfarina, one of the worlds premier car designers. All over Europe. But I haven't seen a single one here.

Ladies and gentlemen, time to wave your ego in the air. My latest project is 351cu, works out at 5.751 liters. 5 dhs to the winner.

I used to mess with guys at auctions like that. A few times they paid extra and couldn't afford more so left the good cars for me. A few times it backfired and I got stuck with the shite. I haven't bought anything in an auction in UAE but I know some people who have. Some got out ok, some got balls of dung. I am repairing one of those balls of dung now and it would have been cheaper to buy a working example through dubizzle. Used to be a buyer for a company in Ireland so I went to a lot of live auctions. The good thing was you could walk around the car park and look at the cars beforehand. Then you went inside and sat in a mini grandstand. The cars were driven in, people bidded, then the cars were driven out. At least you could see the cars were drivable and there was no plumes of smoke coming from the exhaust. But, you didn't get a test drive. If you won the bid, the car was yours. You pay the money, put it on the truck and take it home. 7 times out of 10 I got a good car but that also means 3 times out of 10 you're buying a POS. Maybe it has no brakes, maybe the suspension is banjaxed. You don't know until you win the auction. No pay, no play. I made a big mistake once. My cousin asked me to buy her a small car so I did. I brought it on a trailer straight from the auction house to her house. She drove it a mile up the road and the engine seized. I had to fit a new engine out of my own pocket to get her on the road and ended up losing money. Family eh? Then a company called Copart started buying out all the small auction houses. You could go and look at the cars but you didn't see them running. Most were damaged repairables but a few scrappers in the mix. The auctions went real time online only. Luckily with the UK classification system for insurance claims, A, B, C, D etc you could make an educated guess. But here's the throw, Copart are owned by the Italian mafia. I won't get into too much detail but now you know, you can check it out for yourself. I was buying like 10-15 cars at a time. Random stuff nobody would ever bid on kept showing up on my bid list. Who the hell wants an 8v Vauxhall Calibra? Had many arguments with them. Their answer was always ok, if you don't want this one, you lose the 15 you won and you're barred from the auctions for life. So I just had to accept it. Thank god for dismantling cars and eBay to cover the costs. Anyway, TL:DR why is the car going through auction instead of private sale? There must be something wrong with it.

Congratulations. I think you were the only one still searching 😂

Talbot Lago T26, French again Let’s throw the original Ford Focus into the mix. Not my favourite by a long shot but when it came out it was revolutionary and it has aged well.

Sacrilege! French manufacturers have had some of the best designers working for them. Pininfarina designed the 406 coupe. So good Europeans stick body kits on them and most think it’s a ferarri. Check this, the Citroen DS and SM. Citroen were always way ahead in design terms.

Post your favorite dashboards! One of mine is from the 93 Ford sierra, one of my first cars. I loved how the center console was wrapped around to point everything towards the driver. Mine was similar to this but I added CD player, equalizer and extra gauges to show charging status, oil pressure and true water temperatures. Important when you're running a 300cc overbore on a 4 cylinder engine.

3.0 lethargic? Really? Not trying to fight with you but the numbers seem respectable. In my country if you're engine is over 2.0 you're king of the world. The galloper power to weight ratio seems respectable to me. From my country, a 2.0 turbo diesel will pull you anywhere you need to go. Most 4x4s are diesel. I had a 2.5 TD P38 and a 3.0 TD Colorado. Both manual. Both happily chugged their way up any hill I put them to. Both pulled any load I put to them too. And tbh they were both bought to be tow cars.

For me personally, the Gurkha name attached to a vehicle stirs up feelings that it’s going to be tough as hell, a force to be reckoned with. I know who the Gurkhas were. And they got screwed over for a long time. But it’s good to see them now starting to get the recognition they deserve.

Stuff like that is really easy to build. Would make a nice group project.

Sometimes the challenge is not having the money and making it work anyway

According to Wikipedia they only come in 3.0 v6 petrol or 2.5 diesel.

Enough time, money and knowledge and any project is viable. Especially now in the age of the internet where everything you need to know is at your fingertips. You might not get a return on your investment every time but sometimes it's more about the labour of love than the money. I'm working on 3 projects at the minute, the rat rod, a van and a twin engine jet boat. Most sane people would just nope right out of there but it's a good hobby and a good way to stay occupied. Challenges make the man.

Both take place end of December, start of January during the cold season. Would love to be there myself too