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Right – here we go. Wasnt sure whether to bother but I’m sick of people asking 
If you don’t give a stuff, click back. Normally I don’t care about people having a go, it’s not an issue, but I’ve splurged 3000 words of crap for you guys to read so there.
Here is my thread about motoring in Australia, along with some reviews of the cars I drove.
What are the roads like?
Australia is very much like the United States from a driving point of view. Long straight highways, box intersections, far too many automatic cars and enormous big rigs. The key difference is that Australia has nothing like the Motorway network we have or the Freeway network in the states. Motorways and Freeways do exist – but only around the major cities, generally. I doubt they’ve got a single Motorway or Freeway that’s more than 200 miles long and in a country the size of Australia, that’s something that very much surprised me before I went.
I’d planned to make my trip a huge roadtrip – and given that the GF had absolutely no issues with seeing as much of the country as possible rather than simply flying over it like most people do, that’s what I planned out. I planned an initial route and then figured I could deviate whenever I felt like it. The plan was to drive just under 5000km from Melbourne on the southern Victoria cost to Cairns in tropical North Queensland. In reality, I ended up covering just under 7000km in just under 6 weeks – and that included about 5-6 days at the beginning where we just kicked around in Melbourne. So quite a lot of driving.
So, in the cities, it’s very American. It’s a reasonably young country and it’s a very big country so all the cities are based on the grid layouts popular in the States with the main routes around the cities consisting of multi lane divided roads with frequent crossroads. Loads of empty space and loads of people pulling u-turns. But outside of the cities is where it gets interesting. Not so much until I left Adelaide, where it became apparent that not many people drive from Adelaide to Sydney.
There was a small section of divided highway from Adelaide to about 100km outside, and then another piece from Bathurst through the blue mountains, but otherwise it was just single carriageway roads with a speed limit of 110kph (68mph) or 100kph (62mph) depending on... well, depending on what way the wind blue, as there appeared to be little consistently to the choice of speed limit.
I was often the only car for miles and miles and there was plenty of open scenery, scrubland, huge farms and dead Kangeroos. Driving up the cost from New South Wales to Queensland was rather different and it was a lot busier – but fundamentally the same sense of complete hugeness existed wherever I drove.
So what do they drive over there?
Australia is perhaps the only place in the world where you can stand by the road and somebody will drive past you in a double trailer B double truck followed by a Vauxhall Corsa.
Generally speaking the Australians love big saloons but there are plenty of crappy hatchbacks around as well, most popular of which is the Holden Barina which appears to be a catchall name for the worst cars ever made. Perhaps Holden did it for the lulz, but if it was crap, it was imported by GM and had a Barina badge made on it. Over here I spotted the Suzuki Swift, Corsa B, Corsa C and Daweoo Kalos all badged up as Holden Barinas. Bizarre. But you don’t care about this so I wont go on much longer...
Australians love big engined cars and they certainly seem to love the sport variants. The biggest selling cars here are Holden’s Commodore (Yes, the same car which was basically a Vauxhall Omega in the late 90’s and early 2000’s and the same car that forms the basis of the VXR8 and the same car which, in coupe form, we got as a Monaro) and Ford’s Falcon (Which we’ve never had over here and which is a crying shame – more on that later).
The Jap’s consistently try and get a peice of the party – there are many big Japanese cars over there you’ll never have heard of (Mitsubishi Magna? Mitsubishi 380GT? Toyota Aurion?) but not an awful lot appears able to break Ford and Holdens stranglehold on the market, although Toyotas current effort, the Aurion, is certainly making inroads.
You’ll also be amazed quite how many sporty variants of these cars there as well. Over here, every 30th Mondeo you see is an ST220. Over there, probably about 1 in 3 Commodores or Falcons are the sportier models. The Aussies love their cars. There are adverts for tuning parts on mainstream radio, there are huge billboards for stick on tat, and everyone has a Commodore SS or a Falcon XR. It’s great.
There are also Ute versions of both the Commodore and the Falcon. Ute’s are, quite simply, helluva cool. They are a huge part of Aussie culture and are far better than the crappy Vauxhall Combo’s and Transit connects we seem obsessed with. A Ute is half a car and half a pickup. It’s that simple. Whats more, both Holden and Ford offer a Ute variant of the various sport models. Yes, you can have a 400bhp supercharged Ute right off the shelf with factory Brembo brakes. And it’s only about £25k. The Falcon XR8 for example, is just £19k! The home grown stuff is very cheap new. The same cannot, however, be said for the imported cars.
Australia has a luxury car tax of 35% levied on any vehicle with a retail price of more than $60,000. This is hardly any Holdens or Fords and pretty much all of the BMW’s, Audi’s, Mercedes, etc. Owning a BMW in Australia is hugely expensive. I had a quick nosey to see how much it would cost to buy a 2002 BMW 530i Sport with about 130k on the clock - $35,000. Yes, thats about £17,000. A Ford dealer will sell you a Falcon XR6, brand new, driveaway, for a little over what you need to find to buy a 7 year old BMW 5 Series. Whoa. Used car prices are similarily insane compared to ours – a 1998 Mk2 Mondeo is about $5000. Thats £2.5k! We are VERY lucky to have the used prices we do.
So, without further ado, mini-reviews of the various hire cars. I had quite a lot of cars – mostly because I figured it would be better to rent for short periods than rent one car for a long period of time and then have to pay for parking in Sydney etc etc.
If you don’t give a stuff, click back. Normally I don’t care about people having a go, it’s not an issue, but I’ve splurged 3000 words of crap for you guys to read so there.Here is my thread about motoring in Australia, along with some reviews of the cars I drove.
What are the roads like?
Australia is very much like the United States from a driving point of view. Long straight highways, box intersections, far too many automatic cars and enormous big rigs. The key difference is that Australia has nothing like the Motorway network we have or the Freeway network in the states. Motorways and Freeways do exist – but only around the major cities, generally. I doubt they’ve got a single Motorway or Freeway that’s more than 200 miles long and in a country the size of Australia, that’s something that very much surprised me before I went.
I’d planned to make my trip a huge roadtrip – and given that the GF had absolutely no issues with seeing as much of the country as possible rather than simply flying over it like most people do, that’s what I planned out. I planned an initial route and then figured I could deviate whenever I felt like it. The plan was to drive just under 5000km from Melbourne on the southern Victoria cost to Cairns in tropical North Queensland. In reality, I ended up covering just under 7000km in just under 6 weeks – and that included about 5-6 days at the beginning where we just kicked around in Melbourne. So quite a lot of driving.
So, in the cities, it’s very American. It’s a reasonably young country and it’s a very big country so all the cities are based on the grid layouts popular in the States with the main routes around the cities consisting of multi lane divided roads with frequent crossroads. Loads of empty space and loads of people pulling u-turns. But outside of the cities is where it gets interesting. Not so much until I left Adelaide, where it became apparent that not many people drive from Adelaide to Sydney.
There was a small section of divided highway from Adelaide to about 100km outside, and then another piece from Bathurst through the blue mountains, but otherwise it was just single carriageway roads with a speed limit of 110kph (68mph) or 100kph (62mph) depending on... well, depending on what way the wind blue, as there appeared to be little consistently to the choice of speed limit.
I was often the only car for miles and miles and there was plenty of open scenery, scrubland, huge farms and dead Kangeroos. Driving up the cost from New South Wales to Queensland was rather different and it was a lot busier – but fundamentally the same sense of complete hugeness existed wherever I drove.
So what do they drive over there?
Australia is perhaps the only place in the world where you can stand by the road and somebody will drive past you in a double trailer B double truck followed by a Vauxhall Corsa.
Generally speaking the Australians love big saloons but there are plenty of crappy hatchbacks around as well, most popular of which is the Holden Barina which appears to be a catchall name for the worst cars ever made. Perhaps Holden did it for the lulz, but if it was crap, it was imported by GM and had a Barina badge made on it. Over here I spotted the Suzuki Swift, Corsa B, Corsa C and Daweoo Kalos all badged up as Holden Barinas. Bizarre. But you don’t care about this so I wont go on much longer...
Australians love big engined cars and they certainly seem to love the sport variants. The biggest selling cars here are Holden’s Commodore (Yes, the same car which was basically a Vauxhall Omega in the late 90’s and early 2000’s and the same car that forms the basis of the VXR8 and the same car which, in coupe form, we got as a Monaro) and Ford’s Falcon (Which we’ve never had over here and which is a crying shame – more on that later).
The Jap’s consistently try and get a peice of the party – there are many big Japanese cars over there you’ll never have heard of (Mitsubishi Magna? Mitsubishi 380GT? Toyota Aurion?) but not an awful lot appears able to break Ford and Holdens stranglehold on the market, although Toyotas current effort, the Aurion, is certainly making inroads.
You’ll also be amazed quite how many sporty variants of these cars there as well. Over here, every 30th Mondeo you see is an ST220. Over there, probably about 1 in 3 Commodores or Falcons are the sportier models. The Aussies love their cars. There are adverts for tuning parts on mainstream radio, there are huge billboards for stick on tat, and everyone has a Commodore SS or a Falcon XR. It’s great.
There are also Ute versions of both the Commodore and the Falcon. Ute’s are, quite simply, helluva cool. They are a huge part of Aussie culture and are far better than the crappy Vauxhall Combo’s and Transit connects we seem obsessed with. A Ute is half a car and half a pickup. It’s that simple. Whats more, both Holden and Ford offer a Ute variant of the various sport models. Yes, you can have a 400bhp supercharged Ute right off the shelf with factory Brembo brakes. And it’s only about £25k. The Falcon XR8 for example, is just £19k! The home grown stuff is very cheap new. The same cannot, however, be said for the imported cars.
Australia has a luxury car tax of 35% levied on any vehicle with a retail price of more than $60,000. This is hardly any Holdens or Fords and pretty much all of the BMW’s, Audi’s, Mercedes, etc. Owning a BMW in Australia is hugely expensive. I had a quick nosey to see how much it would cost to buy a 2002 BMW 530i Sport with about 130k on the clock - $35,000. Yes, thats about £17,000. A Ford dealer will sell you a Falcon XR6, brand new, driveaway, for a little over what you need to find to buy a 7 year old BMW 5 Series. Whoa. Used car prices are similarily insane compared to ours – a 1998 Mk2 Mondeo is about $5000. Thats £2.5k! We are VERY lucky to have the used prices we do.
So, without further ado, mini-reviews of the various hire cars. I had quite a lot of cars – mostly because I figured it would be better to rent for short periods than rent one car for a long period of time and then have to pay for parking in Sydney etc etc.
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Some guy at Port Douglas was doing some sort of bikini photoshoot though.