We were going to do up the house

 But we ran out of resource credits...

AWASH WITH EXOTIC CARS

COOL RIDES

Once in a while a really cool looking ride cruises by and I do my best to get a photo of it. New Zealand is not exactly awash with exotic cars. We are a right hand drive country, like England, Australia, India, South Africa and Japan, and most cars in NZ are Japanese. (Approx 34% of the world’s cars are right hand drive, but I’m not sure most people in America realise that)

http://basementgeographer.com/right-hand-traffic-versus-left-hand-traffic/

There is no car industry to protect in NZ, so there is open importing of used Japanese cars. This works brilliantly, because Japan has regulations to encourage the export of all their car fleet when they reach five years old, which means that we get to buy all their mint condition five year old used cars dirt cheap. And that is why cars are cheaper here than in Australia.

When I’m on the look out for cars to take photos of, I’m usually more interested in the non Japanese ones because they are fairly rare. There are some flash European cars here, and even a few Aussie classics, but it’s the American ones that seem really rare and exotic. Especially if the steering wheel is on the wrong side.

Because they are not made by Subaru or Nissan I usually have no idea what they are, but if they sound grunty and look like a pimping ride, I get snapping. Here are a few cars I’ve noticed round the hood.

And now for some English class

Finally, for something totally different, here is a gratuitous shot of some German bling cruising downtown

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DISC BRAKES

 I was looking through some old photos today and found this one - Over the years I had more than 50 bikes of my own and test rode more than 1500 different bikes - possibly a lot more (Test riding repaired bikes was one of my jobs)

But I only ever owned one with disc brakes - this 97 Diamondback X2 all rebuilt with upgraded parts - it had top of the line Hope brakes that were selling for crazy $ back in the 90's - they started out retailing for NZ$2700 for a pair, and got gradually cheaper, but I would have got all that gear fairly cheap - I think the bike cost me about NZ$3k all up when I built it up in 97.

Truth is I always preferred old school hard tails and wished they had a downhill race class for them - I was never any faster on full suspension - and this bike felt too heavy for my tastes, as did all full suspension bikes.