My views on the Performance Car Market

[flappist]

Originally Posted by GT0132

Pretty provocative statement you make there

Hang on a minute?

So the bloke who tarts up his NA XR6 with stripes, lowers it with 19" copy rims but does no performance enhancing mods is labelled an FPV wannabe because he has the show but not the go and the guy who buys the real deal gets labelled a "pretender" because he orders the stripe package instead of bigger brakes ???

One of the reasons you may not have had a good response from AFF members is the distance to get there for most and the boredom factor.
If i'm taking a week off work I'd rather spend it on a beach in Fiji.. drinking beer and cocktails, maybe a surf or two than driving to the back of Goodndawindi to see how fast my car will go.

The distance from me to the border is 2000km, 2 days drive (driving at night out west is crazy) BUT I LIKE DRIVING and I LIKE DRIVING FAST. I do 35000-50000km a year and have done so almost almost every year since 1976 except for 1978 when I did 250,000km in that year. My Z already has over 30,000km on it and I did about 200,000km in my FPVs.

To me, two days drive to get to a week or two of fun in my car is far better than sitting in a big aluminium tube for a number of hours to go to a place where I will do exactly the same thing as I can do at home.
Maybe if I was a surfing enthusiest I would fly to other countries to surf, I am sure there are lots of people who do so.
I used to know a couple of surfing enthiusiests quite well. They drove all over Australia to catch the big waves. Torquay, Cottelsoe, Leuwin and lots of other places that took days or weeks to get to and when there would sit on their boards sometimes for hours just to get ONE good wave. They were not pretenders and did not worry about being bored.

On the other hand I often see on the beaches lots of people who have big shiny surfboards and all the surf clothes etc. that never seem to actually get in the water of if they do it is only at the safe popular beaches where others can see them being "surfies".
I wonder if they talk a lot about surfing heritage, the best boards, what wax makes the best ride and other seaweed crap instead of actually going out and surfing?

It is interesting to note though that the "surfing enthusiest" retailers seem to stock and sell far more "pretender" items than "actual" surfer items. Ever seen the ads on TV? Lots of bikinis, board shorts and t-shirts not much actual surfing. They are surfies not surfers.

So it comes back to actual sales, when the buyers would rather spend a week in Fiji than drive their car fast why would anyone try to sell an expensive fast car over a cheaper pretty car that looks like a fast car?

As far as tarting up a base model. If the owner actually gets out and drives his cheaper base model then he is not a pretender he is just not in a position to buy a better car. If on the other hand he tarted it up and then spends all his time an maccas car parks or sipping cocktails in Bali rather than drive then he may be a car enthusiest but he is definitely not a driving enthusiest.