The last poster wins

[Vindekarr]

Sold my car today, it's been for sale for a while, but today I finally accepted an offer-it's the last of it's kind so I wanted it to go to a good owner rather than some hooligan who'd wreck it.

 

It was a Ford Typhoon, 2011. I bought it when it was an aspirational car; the very fastest locally made car you could buy, well made, reliable, and part of a model line that had run unbroken since 1962. It had the added benefit of being a Ford-my brother, uncle, and formerly grandfather all worked for the brand at some point, and I did my apprenticeship in engineering for them aswell. Now it's a monument to a failed industry: faced with a high minimum wage in Australia, and the fact Australians tend to demand far higher build quality than American Fords can deliver, Ford sacked all 15,000 workers including my two family members, and then moved their factory to an impoverished region of Thailand, to staff it with the sort of locals who'll work for under the min. wage, in bad conditions. I can understand cost cutting, but A sacking that many people who were poor already, and B blatantly exploiting sub poverty-line natives, is just off, so I've gone and gotten rid of it.

[Thor.]

:blink: Fix or repaired daily, or found on road dead. Or rusting out by the time it hits 4 years old here in Canada, harsh winters.

not much a fan myself really.

Funny thing is Civics and nissans do not rust out, they must be doing something right ford and Chevrolet isn't doing properly.

Edited June 25, 2013 by Thor.

[Iv000]

A very good morning indeed!

[Iv000]

Oh my goooooooddddddd, I've been trying to enter DFU mode on my iPod for 25 minutes now but my god damn lack of fine motor skills is messing it up all the time.

 

I have to hold the power button first to turn it on, then hold the power and home button for 10 sec, then release the power button and hold only the home button for 15 sec. I can't for the life of me control how much pressure I put on the god damn power button while also holding the home button and then I accidentally release it and it just powers on without entering DFU mode.

 

f*#@ buttons, this is why I love touch screens

[Vindekarr]

Thor-the reason for this is that even if brands are selling cars within a general price range, the actual manufacturing process can be very different. Aswell as being made in different ways, and from different materials, different car brands also have different levels of Tolerance. When making a car, all the components are measured and then compared to a blueprint, this is called Quality Control; the degree to which a part can differ from the blueprint before it's rejected is called the Tolerance. A High Tolerance means the brand allows even fairly warped or otherwise sub-optimal parts to be put into cars, cheapening the vehicle. A Low Tolerance applies strict quality control; anything more than a tiny bit off the original blueprints is discarded. This vastly improves the car's quality but vastly increases costs. The established Japanese brands are very, very good at streamlining the Quality Control process, allowing them to make cars cheaply, while still sticking to a Low Tolerance. This is why Japanese cars, especially Hondas, display such outstanding longevity; they're built to a much finer standard.

 

Let me put this in perspective; the flagship Chevy sports car is the Camaro; it's an excellent car-rugged, powerful, excellent handling and brakes. It's Tolerance is about 1.5 millimetres. A normal American car's tolerance sits about 3mm. A Nissan GTR is built to a tolerance as low as 50 NM(nanometres, one-hundredth of a milimetre) On paper, with it's much larger, more powerful engine and lower weight, the Camaro should have a huge advantage over the GTR in a race, but in reality the GTR is actually far and above the quicker machine; the Camaro is no slouch, but the GTR is so beautifully designed and that design is so well realised, that it's just in a different league to the Camaro; it's the third-fastest accelerating road car in history, despite only costing $60,000. Legendary.

[Pushkatu]

It's doing something to my brain, I can't tell, I'm not allowed to.

[Ironman5000]

@Vindekarr: Are you Jeremy Clarkson? :P

@Pushkatu: What is? ...wait don't tell me, they will only make it worse!

[Werne]

@Vindekarr Your avatar, it looks familiar to me... :huh:

[M48A5]

Vindekarr,

 

Sorry, the flagship Chevrolet sports car is the Corvette ZR1, not the Camaro.

[Vindekarr]

Not anymore. The ZR1 has been discontinued and the Zo6 is about to follow. The Camaro ZL1 is the current flagship until the StingRay Zo7 arrives, and it's some way away yet.

 

Ironman-no, I dare say I'm a lot less racist, probably talk a lot less s*** and don't have stupid curly hair. I am however, an auto engineer by trade, a club level car and bike racer, and I come from a long line other engineers, club racers, and general gear-heads. Motoring's in my blood almost literally; both my parents were massive gearheads, my brother worked in a car factory, I'm a certified engineer, two of my uncles are engineers, my grandfather was an engineer, and my great grandfather and was an engineer aswell(albeit working in the British merchant navy) When you have that kind of family, you know a thing or two about cars.