W201 wolf in sheeps clothing .

[Mercmad]

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set ... 510&type=1

With some mods to it's ECU they think it will have around 600HP ...

[m48pro69]

I like a lot.

[Mercmad]

i am half way through doing the same with a W111 coupe here but the big stumbling block is the soviet era thinking in the Qld transport department who think i am rebirthing a car... and thus will not allow me to register it. No wonder our manufacturing base has faded away.

[vanir]

i am half way through doing the same with a W111 coupe here but the big stumbling block is the soviet era thinking in the Qld transport department who think i am rebirthing a car... and thus will not allow me to register it. No wonder our manufacturing base has faded away.

It's bloody frustrating when the "authority" is completely unqualified to be any kind of relative authority. I had dramas when I put an XU1 engine in a 4-door LC Torana, one guy put it off the road for having an illegal engine modification, "the 4-door never came out with that engine" he said, and according to the writ I was facing an engineer's certificate. I tried to be tricky and fixed a few cosmetic things like a better battery mount to clear the triple carbs since what I originally did was just bang the old mount with a hammer to turn the battery the other way to clear them; then took it to another guy to view and he cleared it. I told him about the first guy and he said he shouldn't have done that, structurally it clearly makes no difference whether you put the motor from the 2-door into a 4-door version of the same car, so long as all the other bits are up to scratch, and were. He then went on to tell me he used to have an XU1 and loved driving it, so I was just lucky there. Get the wrong guy and the world can be against you, the right guy and you're all good. A bit odd that.

[T-Modell]

.... Get the wrong guy and the world can be against you, the right guy and you're all good. A bit odd that.

That's universal, same here. I remember 2 or 4 years ago I went with the E63 to TÜV (authority check) and the guy was that competent (when the car was lifted up), that he asked his colleague, if the exhaust system was allowed, it was standard

Nowadays, I give my cars to Mercedes to do the TÜV ... this year the W111 had to get the new sticker ... when I asked, how it went, the Mercedes Mechanic said "the guy asked me, if the car was alright, then he put the sticker on"

Thomas

[Mercmad]

I have watched this whole thing unfold since the early 70's in Australia. I would read articles in various car mags about how the manufacturers here were trying to protect their sales base by lobbying hard for the government to out law car modifications . Coupled to this was the Oz pollys habit of apeing other countries legislation . In this case a lot of the ADR's were influenced by the news releases of Ralph Nader. Car development didn't progress that well here though. Ford used the same basic platform for the falcon for 30 plus years and Holden went to the GM A body platform for the HQ then the opel comode .

[xrqtr]

The good 'ol U.S of Murrikah lol, protectionism by auto makers in this country is the reason it failed, once many of the import tarrifs/duties were dropped or decreased after free trade agreements they realized that they'd priced themselves out of the market......in their own market.

The unions didn't help much with constant wage increases, I remember someone telling me many years ago that at Toyota in Altona if the body shop was slow they;d intentionally dent cars on the build line just to give the guys in the body shop something to do and so that they wouldn't cut staff.

This is pretty common to see in the US with early bodies being dropped onto late model chassis' in order to get it passed by engineers, sure dropping in a late model V8 is great but then it's the safety side that has been an issue, so instead they bypassed it by simply using the entire sub frame, braking system and any other safety features associated with it such as structural rigidity, crush points and so on. Trying to do that here you'd be best to go down the ICV route as this way it's a completely new car rather than an amalgamation of two or more cars and would be easier to get by I would think.

[Ivanerrol]

Unions and government authorities.
One only needs to look what happened to the once great U.K. car manufacturing to see what happens when you let both of these malingerers loose.
Do you know that one of the last British designed mass market cars actually had a square steering wheel? This was the car that replaced the Morris Marina - allegedly the worst car to ever come out of the U.K. It's actually a toss up whether or not the Marina or it's replacement - the Allegro was the worst ever British mass produced car.

When I was in the U.K. during the seventies, the Trico windscreen wiper factory was on strike - for two years. 99% of U.K. new cars came with locally produced Trico wipers. When I bought my brand new Fiat in 1975 in London it had no windscreen wipers. The stealership gave me a voucher to go to the local auto shop to get a set of imported ones.