Archive for September, 2012
Have Caravan, Will Travel
Experiencing the charming realm of a caravan holiday is hugely stress-reducing, and caravanning is a simple and easy way of going bush with a few of the extra creature comforts that can make the adventure that much more laid-back and comfortable. If you’ve ever had the chance to camp, most of you will agree that the relaxing times in tents and caravans, away from technology, can be one of the best ways to recharge your body batteries. Caravans offer much more comfort and shelter than a tent, and they can be kitted out with everything that you need for camping. So, when the time comes to head away, you just hook up the caravan and away you go.
Touring Australia by caravan is the best way, I reckon. Although, my love of motorcycling is hard to flick off. The right car for the job is a big must. Not just any vehicle is going to be happy towing a caravan, so you’re advised to check what the vehicle manufacturer says your vehicle can tow. If you want to tackle some of the more remote areas, which will inevitably mean you’ll travel Outback roads and tracks, then a 4×4 like a Nissan Patrol, Land Rover Discovery or Toyota Land Cruiser will do the job, no probs. Your caravan will also need to be up to the task of travelling off the tarmac, and there are plenty of very good caravan designs which are suitable for off-road work. Roadstar Caravans and Creative Caravans are two examples of Australian caravan manufacturers who make a super nice caravan that can withstand the rigours of off-road work.
If the idea of getting lost in the Outback is not for you, then caravanning the coast of Australia is easy-as, and can be done in your Holden Cruze or Toyota Corolla – even, as long as you stick with towing lightly designed caravans. Just think: cheap accommodation, your own bed, own food and you can even get up and leave when you want to. Now that sounds relaxing!
What to do when nature calls? If your caravan doesn’t have a built in bathroom and toilet, then the best way to cater for heading off to the loo is by using one of the vast array of portable toilets. These are very easy and cheap to buy at any outlet that sells camping gear. Even Kmart will have one. A spade in the boot is the next best option. You can use this for digging a long drop – and when you get your vehicle stuck the spade is a must have.
Having a good supply of fresh clean drinking water and plenty of easy-to-make meals is a good idea. Take some candles for lighting purposes, as thay are not only simple and easy to use, they create a romantic atmosphere to you caravan interior as you sit sipping wine and watching the red sun set. Sometimes Australia can get really cold, particularly overnight. Do make sure that you have a good supply of blankets and warm clothing. A good Australian atlas is a must, especially one that will show you where the caravan parks, camping areas and 4WD tracks are – not to mention fuel outlets. If the track you care to take will take you to the never-nevers, then it’s wise to let someone know your whereabouts and your expected time of arrival. An emergency kit with anti-venom and a cell phone are other really important items.
Whatever the vehicle is that you are using for towing the caravan, make sure that you are up-to-date with its servicing. The last thing you want is a break down in the middle of nowhere. Checking the condition of the caravan is important, too. The chassis, wheel bearings and tyres are the key areas to keep in good nick. Carrying some tools and materials for emergency repairs is a wise idea – depending on how ‘go bush’ you will be going.
Heading off in your favourite drive, be it the C-Class Estate, Landie or Sportwagon, with a caravan towing behind, there are fewer more satisfying ways of exploring this great country of ours. And whether you have children or not, you are going to make for yourself some great long-lasting memories.
Selling a Second-Hand Car: Selling Online
The chances are if you’re on the hunt for a new set of wheels that viagra from canada you already have one set sitting in your garage or on your driveway. You can, of course, trade the old vehicle in for the new one, but you tend to get a few more shekels if you sell it yourself – well, usually. This depends on the vehicle you’re selling and what your local car dealer can offer you in the way of a trade-in. But often, if you do your homework, you end up working out that you can probably get more by being your own used car salesman/woman/person.
Online auction sites like EBay (by far the most popular and international online sales site) are very popular for selling off your stuff. People go on that site for fun “just to have a wee look at what’s out there” and also when they’re seriously hunting for a car. And there are many upsides to doing so, as well as the odd downside.
One of the downsides is that you usually have to pay an insertion fee – after all, the operators of EBay have to eat. And even though listing some things on EBay can be done for free, cars can’t be, as you’ll find out if you read the small print. And you also have to pay a percentage of the final selling price. Make sure that you factor these costs in when you set the reserve price on the auction. At this point, you still want to be sure that you’re getting more cash in hand for your old wheels than you would get by using the vehicle as a trade in. Also consider this when setting your reserve price and your “buy now” price. The same applies to other online auction sites that allows private individuals to list stuff for sale.
To get a good idea of what your starting price and what your reserve price should be, have a look at other cars listed of the same age and type as the one you’re selling. Your price should be roughly around the same level, although you need to take mileage and overall condition into consideration.
Photos are an absolute must when you’re selling a vehicle online, but not all photos are alike. It can get a little ho-hum if the only photos you put up just show the exterior of the car from different angles. Yes, your car looks pretty good and you’ve done a nice job with the polish, but often buyers want to know more than just that – at least I would. If you’re looking for, say, a Honda Accord, and you see half a dozen listings that just show the front and side, and they’re all similar colours, they all start to look the same. So what sort of photos should you include?
- Side, front and rear views of the vehicle, and ensure that the licence plate is showing
- Shot of the dash and possibly a close-up of the odometer to prove that the mileage is really what you say it is.
- View of the boot plus things like the spare tyre.
- Shot of the engine bay – it doesn’t have to be steam cleaned!
- If the seats fold down, show them in folded and upright position
- A shot of any special features, e.g. alloy wheels
- A shot of any flaws that you’ve mentioned in your description so the viewers know exactly what they’re in for, e.g. that worn tyre or that little ding.
Be reasonably detailed when describing your vehicle and don’t just copy and paste the relevant page out of our car reviews (I’ve seen this done). Let your buyers know all the basic stats like the year, the engine size, the mileage, and all that sort of thing. If it’s got any special features or if you’ve recently replaced some parts, then list these as well (e.g. “brand new tyres on front”).
You may or may not want to list minor flaws. The key word here is “minor” – small things that you’d like to know if you were the buyer. You may also want to list the reason you’re selling it, but use discretion. “Owner going overseas,” “Expecting new addition to the family,” and “We’re downsizing and don’t need a second vehicle,” are all good reasons why you could be selling, but don’t explain that “It’s a thirsty brute and I’m not supporting its drinking habit any longer.”
There are a lot of cars for sale online so your vehicle may not sell the first time you list it. Often, the second attempt is more successful (but you might strike it lucky first time). Patience pays off… or you might like to try another method.
Nifty Ways to Use Your GPS System on Road Trips
It wasn’t too long ago that your family would take the traditional road trip and your dad would be attempting to drive while peering over a large map. He was lost, had too much pride to stop and ask for directions, and your holiday was hampered as a result.
Today, road trips have been forever changed by GPS navigation systems. These slick computer systems can get you from point A to point B, offering the quickest directions. Have a detour? No problem. Your GPS will automatically create a new route…and family road trips can be fun again.
While you’re probably familiar with punching in the address to where you want to go on your GPS, there are a bevy of new features that are being released on many of the new GPS systems today, allowing users to truly get the most out of their GPS navigation system.
Set Your Home
Most GPS systems have a “Take Me Home” feature, which allows the user to simply click home and receive directions back to their home address. The only problem is, most of the time this feature is hidden. You’re never asked for your home address right in the beginning.
Search your instruction manual and figure out how to input your home address. The next time you’re in an unfamiliar place and need to get home, you’re only one button away.
NOTE: If your car is ever stolen, you don’t want to give the car thief directions to your front door. Therefore, instead of programming your exact address as “home,” just program the address of a landmark in your neighborhood.
Need Gas? Food? A Hotel?
Before GPS systems became more sophisticated, you either called information for the closest gas station or asked around. Today, GPS systems are a one-stop shop.
Use the “Point of Interests” feature on your GPS to find the closest gas station, hotel or restaurant. Some of the better GPS systems will give you the actual name of the restaurant in their directory and include the phone number so you can call and make a reservation if need be…and there are even a couple of systems that will show you reviews so you can see which restaurants are worth going to and which aren’t.
And if you’re ever low on petrol, this feature will also point you to the closest service station.
Avoid Heavy Traffic
Did you know that most new GPS systems actually offer live traffic updates? There’s no more wondering how backed up the highway is or if the turnpike construction is completed.
Live traffic updates allow you to avoid those busy areas and save a significant amount of time. Of course, theres’s a catch: these systems are usually only available in major metropolitan areas, and many of them carry a monthly service fee.
Still, if the prospect of getting stuck in traffic gets your blood boiling, a monthly service fee is a small price to pay.
Author Taylor Ritchie feels lost without a good navigation system. Taylor relies on NRMA gps sat nav for directions and other nifty features such as avoiding heavy traffic.
The World’s Worst Car?
The Book of Heroic Failures (a very popular and funny collection of spectacular failures and epic fails) quite naturally has an entry for the worst car ever. The (dis)honours in that book go to the Ford Edsel. And the Ford Edsel is certainly a bit of a dog. It was a gas-guzzler that came out just as a recession was hitting. The design of the front end was downright peculiar and the car itself wasn’t overly reliable. And then there was the name – naming a vehicle after the offspring of the company founder might have worked for Mercedes Benz (Mercedes was the name of Daimler’s daughter) but didn’t work when they tried naming this one after Edsel, son of Henry Ford Junior.
However, Ford Edsels are still knocking around and are considered classic collector’s items. After all, the cars were slightly notorious. However, they are still around to be collected. The same cannot be said for another contender for the title of Worst Car Ever, the Ford Pinto.
It is something of a tribute to all the other Ford cars that the company survived both of these spectacular failures. Having produced two such dogs (or lemons) would have ruined a lesser company.
But the Pinto! Regular readers of this blog will have noticed the Pinto turning up in the list of the (possibly) ugliest cars and the cars with the silliest names. The ugliness of the Pinto is, of course, debateable, and some people might like that rather interesting and slightly pointy back end. And an awful lot of people don’t. And the name is also unfortunate. My guess is that the designers of the Pinto were thinking of the horses, keeping this car in line with the Mustang. Horse-lovers, of course, know that “pinto” is the American name for a piebald or skewbald horse (black and white or brown and white for those who aren’t horsey) and they were really popular with Native Americans, so you’ve got a bit of a Wild West touch. However, because the name derives from the Spanish word for “paint” (because the horses look like they’ve had large blobs of white paint chucked at them), it’s also the name of a type of bean that also has a two-tone colour job. And it’s the Spanish for “pint”. In Portuguese, however, it means something different again – it’s the word for a willy, and I don’t mean the company that first came out with Jeeps.
But a bad name and debateable looks aren’t the utter kiss of death for a car. Ugliness is debateable and a car with a bad name can be perfectly reliable and efficient. But being dangerous is unforgiveable. And this is why the Ford Pinto really should have the title of Worst Car Ever. The Ford Edsel’s mechanical foibles pale by comparison beside what the Pinto could do.
It’s all in that sloping back end. You see, the design of the back end meant that if the Pinto was rear-ended – possibly one of the most common types of accident – the fuel tank would be shoved forwards and bits of it would break off, meaning that it was more likely to burst into flames in an accident. The sloping back end meant that the fuel tank didn’t have an awful lot of protection at the rear – not much of a bumper and absolutely no crumple zones. This is one reason why you don’t see too many Ford Pintos as collectors’ items: a lot of them exploded and ended up on the scrap heap.
The true ugliness of the Ford Pinto was revealed when a corporate document about this car was leaked to the public. You see, the heads of Ford at that time had become aware that this design flaw turned the Pinto into a death trap. And then they did a nasty piece of accounting where they weighed up the costs of recalling and repairing the vehicles versus the cost of paying compensation when drivers and passengers were burned alive – and found that compensation was cheaper so they decided to go with that (A copy of the original exposee is available here). A recall was forced on them eventually and the company was hauled into court with one heck of a lawsuit that the infamous cost–benefit analysis hadn’t quite factored in (full details on this website).
Ford survived and Ford has cleaned up its reputation since then. The Model T, the Anglia, the Mustang, the Thunderbird, the Escort and others remained popular. And Ford Europe and Ford Australia didn’t go near the Pinto. So Ford everywhere survived.
In many ways, the Ford Fiesta took the place of the Pinto shortly after a major lawsuit, becoming the compact economy model that had been the original aim behind the Pinto. Modern Fiestas got 5 stars out of 5 in the ANCAP safety tests.