Beer Baron

yep, if you can lock in a price do it. I do not know what nissnan australias policy is the hedging their forex but they may well have hedged enough currencey as of the price announcement to cover their first years allocation, or they may have a financing deal with nissan japan that does not require them to pay for the cars under certain forex conditions etc. but if not they will have just added nearly 30% of the cost to these cars from this time a month ago purely with the downfall of the AUD. so that either they re-price it up. or they take less profit. or they had already priced enough fat in there to cover things like this. anyway, regardless of that if you are buying one from nissan, try and lock in a price and pay your deposit!

well the RBA cut of 100bps actually f**ks our dollar more. currencey trade depends a lot on the differential in cash rates between markets and they just reduced ours by a fair whack. the lower it goes expect our currencey value to go with it. great if you have a mortgage. not great if you buy stuff from OS or travel a lot. I have/do both so it kind of balances out a little for me. but it's still fked.

depends where you live in sydney. I have owned lots of highly modified imports (like very modified) and have never been defected. but I don't cruise around the rocks at 10km/h with the stereo pumping and I don't cruise around bankstown either. so that would certainly help.

I have to be honest here I know the guy and have seen his mates car, and from what I know it is much nicer than yours. don't want to bring you down just letting you know he wasn't just bullshitting.

laurence is right. it's very hard to predict what will happen as currencey trading is just as shady as any other. a guy here has subscription to the $$$ bloomberg info complete with all their market predictions and analysis. and right now they are not predicting nice things for the AUD over the next few years but I wonder what they were predicting 4 weeks ago when things were rosy? I bet they weren't predicting this. so when it comes down to it even the smartest coookies out there don't really know what will happen. it's all just guessing with some guesses more educated than others. I am glad I don't need to import much stuff for the rest of this year, but even a few bits and pieces I need will now cost me the farken earth. and even worse I have 2 trips to Japan scheduled for the next 3 months... d'oh! better go grab all the loose yen floating around my house. I'm gunna need it!

lol, there is no claim that porsche couldn't get out of 3rd gear. that was a joke.... and there is no massive gearbox failure. I only know of one. and it was not in the US, the bloke is somewhere in europe (he just posted it on the US site) that is why he's got no help as the GTR is not sold by nissan in his country.. I have seen a fair few R35s cop a fair bit of punishment with a fair bit of power too and not seen any failure of any kind. this particular bloke was a launch control fiend and launched his GTR into gearbox failure mode and has now launched himself into wallet emptying mode.

yep AUD is fked right now. currently buying 65 yen. Importing a car right now would have to be close to shooting yourself in the foot. anyone looking for a car would be smart to either buy one here and take advantage of someone else who imported when the rate was good or just wait. but sadly it could be weeks or it could be a few years before the rate gets anything like normal again. it's a big blow for me. not least of which I have 2 trips to japan scheduled in the next 3 months. it will be unbelievably quiet for exporters in japan for the the foreseable future. I cannot remember the last time the dollar was this bad. must have been well over 5 years ago.

its quite easy to navigate the MFD and other controls even without any japanese language skills. and some kind folk have done up neat little translation manuals with functions translated and how to get to them. they have done up translations for the controls to. JDM is still a good option as I think nissans delivery times will still be quite a way off, and with limited supply you could be waiting until deep into next year.

ps. think of how cheap any aussie sh1t you want will be. you want me to bring you some lynxx etc next month? then pay me in yen onegaishimasu!

most currencies are heavily indexed against the USD. as I said. when the US economy and US finanical markets are in trouble they bring their money home. take it out of risky stuff (foreign markets) and put it back into the good old greenback and T-bills etc. this props up the comparative value of the USD since it is being heavily bought. amongst currencey traders they follow suit and sell off currencey like the AUD, JPY etc which further shoots them down. also, our dollar has seen record value off the back of the resources industry boom and super high interest rates. the RBA today cut interest rates by 100bps (most only exptected 50bps max). so that 1% rate cut will put further downward pressure on the AUD. so I would say the AUD may correct upwards a little over the next few days (as it should not be THIS low). but it may take a while before it gets up near anything decent. to put it simply guys like you and I who do a lot of stuff with importing japanese goods to aus are heavily f**ked. it's great news for farmers and exporters though. great news for our tourist industry too. f**ked for me since I travel to japan twice a year and spend yen like it's toy money. not anymore... though this is a great time to send any JPY to aus if you ever need to do that... on the bright side I look back at all the stuff I bought or sold while the AUD was strong. imported 2 R35 GTRs, and a ton of bits for my cars, especially the 32. so I think I made the most of it as best I could. If i could have sent more AUD over to yen I would have! spewing it's not still sitting on 105yen/dollar

all true, and i've looked into 26 head porting a lot and talked to lots of different GTR tuning shops now in Japan and in oz too. and the ones whose opinions I trust the most and who have the RB26 experience to back it up tell me (in simple terms). street RB26 build = leave them alone, street/club track use build = remove one side, high power/high boost/track/drag use = remove both as it will enable you to run more boost, and more timing before detonation sets in. most of the serious race RB26 engines I can think of off the top of my head have done something with them, either removed one side, or removed both all together. we can agree on one thing though, there are lots of different opionions out there! to expand further. squish zones intact gives good off boost and boost building reponsiveness, but propensity for knock with any sort of decent ign advance and decent boost levels one side removed is a one foot in each camp solution. lose a bit of the off boost dirvability, gain the ability to tune with more boost and more timng before knock both sides, lose off boost and boost build torque but gain it back and then some with the ability to safely run big boost, and more timing.

farken spewing I couldn't come out. would have been the perfect day. nice and cool weather too. looks like you guys made the most of it. good stuff.

oookaaay. anyway. for those interested and thinking about importing the current exchange rate means 1 AUD now buy around 70yen. so a nice 34 GTR that costs 4mil yen in japan. 2 months ago would cost $40K in japan. now would cost over $50K in japan, plus $12K in taxes and about another $8K in importing costs. so you are looking at around $70K to import a really nice R34 at the moment. which makes this one suddenly seem very cheap!

I reckon the toyos which weigh in at 285 front and 315 rear would have as good a shot as any! providing they are available in a suitable compound.

head looks nice, valves look nice, but I'm surprised you guys didn't remove the squish zones while the head was being ported.

well we know your 18inch TEs fitted over the 380mm rotors, but will they fit over the new 400mm ones? i'm guessing not. but some nice 19inch TEs with some semi's could be a winner.

great work to kel and tony and russ and ben. really good to see you guys out there showing the cars potential. with semi slicks it will certainly be amongst the pointy end. like I said last night it was good to see you had a little off too russ, i would have been dissapointed if you weren't trying. and above all 2 X R35s came back in one piece.

nothing is too bad in aus. but the problem is in the US when things start to go bad all the big investment firms bring their money home. ie they pull out of foreign markets and re-invest heavily in their US dollar at T-bills etc. this has the obvious effect of propping up their dollar and it deals us a pretty big blow. it should be better than it is right now purely because our interest rates are comparitively high next to the USD and JPY. and yes, exchange rates are not really a measure of economic health. they are just how that currencey is trading. a weak dollar against the yen can help our economy in many ways. anyone exporting goods or services is miles better off obviously, and it must investment here more attractive. you are right though in that it completely f**ks importers (or japanese exporters). the price of anything we buy in from japan has just skyrocketed.

panasport G7s on a 32 look pretty hot. check out the pic of a saurus built GTR in my japan pics thread. it sports the G7s in about 18 X 11 or similar. look hot.

900 grams is nice and light for springs. they must be good.

i decide who desrerves it purely based on who I like or dislike. for the record I like: webber kimi sato kubica schuey DC rubes is ok dont like hamilton kovalinen trulli vettel (purely because he fked webbers japan race last year, I can't forgive or forget. lol) heidfeld (dunno why, just don't) I have a few guys that could go either way in my like/dislike list. like alonso.

D'oh! poor fellas. on the bright side at least he hit the cheap end... I didn't even know it had started yet!! be carefull the rest of you boys (and girl) ps. the 'girl' is russ...

sorry I missed it guys happy b'day to you both. hope it was good fun even without me lol.

yep diff still there along with his handy can of petty. very relieved I got it back. it's not that valuable but it would have been a cnt to replace as they don't come up very often.

well all is well. My dad knowing full well the police would not exactly be issuing an APB to find his car took it upon himself to drive around between chatswood and brookvale and eventually came across the car in chatswood just 3 blocks from the police station. he figured that since they torched the last car that was what would be in store for ours and it would fk the diff. he knew they wouldn't do it during the day but would probably do it tonight, so the best chance of getting it back would be today. anyway he called the cops and it turns out they have arrested the litttle butt monkey as he robbed a few houses and was caught trying it again. lucky my dad found the car as the bloke had left half a can of petrol in there reading for tonights torching... forensics is checking the car for prints, skin and dna right now. so it looks like he may finally feel some justice afterall. bit rough that the police couldn't trip over a car that was literall 1 single right hand turn away from where they park their cars.... about 150 meters away. anyway, it put a smile on my face.