996tnz

In case it helps anyone be wary of trailers, here's how it started with the mighty black Audi allroad's last stand. I was accelerating, having left a roundabout and doing about 75kph in the 80 zone when the car in the left lane got thrown into mine by their badly back-weighted load of wooden beams. They were also accelerating out and doing about 60 or 65 ish at the time.

Barrier on the right (a square kerb, a foot of garden then a vertical wall). Wife in the passenger seat, kids facing out the back in the 3rd row. And a big Nissan Pathfinder on my tail

nzskater

Walt, a friend's selling an E55 (listed on Trademe), which is a steal at $22k. It's well sorted with a few extra horses under the hood. Worth considering if you want some relatively cheap luxury (barge) sedan commuter action. It's retardedly fast in a straight line (beats the Turbo in the dry), and more comfortable than most others in its class/price point.

996tnz

Sorely tempted Jake and thanks for the heads up. If I didn't already have the Turbo I'd be on that like the proverbial. I test drove an E55 Kompressor just before buying my Turbo. Left the yard and - hallelujah - the lights ahead turned red. I asked the salesman if he minded me testing the acceleration. He said "that's fine". I knew what was coming but he probably didn't as he pretty much shat himself. Those things launch like fighters off a catapult deck, even from fairly low revs. The Turbo can do that too, but only at the sort of revs you save for race starts on track. It didn't have the cornering prowess and feedback of the yellow terror or I'd have bought it. Was about 36K NZD and a relative bargain at the time.

Macca

That looks fairly priced at 60K given indicated provenance...

Macca

Walt, Im very glad to hear no one was injured! Must have been quite upsetting for the wife and kids. Sounds like you have found a path of automotive recovery.

Wife inst worried about the Ford badge (we have Ranger Wildtrak here which she drives happily - its Chilli Orange - my choice but a colour she has come to "accept"). I think the wrap idea is a good one to make the colour more acceptable, but I suspect its a fair on the seat comfort front. Jos a bit seat sensitive, though shes made a brave show of it in the GT3/993.

Ive been cruising the UK car ads. Very hard to find a deal. Id order a new Macan but the wait list is 6 months. The BMW M2 (she wouldnt drive that tho) is 9 months. The car I really like the look of that i think would do the job is the RR Evoque but Jo doesnt like the "slant cab" design. Still working on it. The Audi RSQ3 looked like it met all the requirements for a while. But she didnt like the shape LOL!

996tnz

...and here is how it progressed after our right front tyre burst and a rear wheel broke loose of some of its mountings as we were pushed sideways over the square kerb:



Split second decision but as I was already passing the other car (next to the trailer and coming up on its boot) and carrying 20kph more with the Pathfinder behind, I swerved right to the edge of the fast lane and gunned it for the gap. There was a median wall close by on our right, so hitting our brakes would have probably seen their car T bone the median wall straight in front of me with the trailer hemming us in on the left and us still carrying 60kph+ into the side of a car braced by a wall at one end, and a heavy trailer at the other. As it was, we narrowly got through but were still impacted in the left side which forced the Audi's right side wheels over the square edged median kerb. Cue that blown out front right tire (5cm x 5cm L cut) and a right rear wheel flopping around with what later looked like one or more broken control arms.

We popped back out onto the road still under power (for controllability) then I started braking as much as directional control would allow as we headed into a right hand bend. Didn't know the extent of the damage but noticed I couldnt get more than about one third brake power without the car wanting to swap ends. So rode that fine line until the armco on the outside of the bend started to loom a little too large and I had no choice but to hammer the picks harder. She came around clockwise, with me going to full brakes while she was sideways then backing off a little to regain some steering as she went backwards. Still only about 50% braking capacity (makes sense as the brake proportioning is reversed when going backwards) so I added as much handbrake (thank god again for a proper handbrake) as she could take as we tried to steer parallel to the armco while scrubbing as much speed as possible. The 30-40m long scrape marks from the front right rim and from the wedged out rear tyre ran almost parallel to the armco but we eventually lost the battle and bounced off it at a shallow angle before coming to a rest about a meter past the point we hit it.

Fairly exciting finish for the rear-facing kids as they were right up front for the last half of the action. And as you might imagine, her handling was a bit interesting after getting pushed over the kerb sideways by the towing car:



Sad to see her like that but at least we all walked away fine. Left side damage was a testament to german side intrusion protection:



At top left above you can see the back of their trailer. Their car slewed to a halt in our original lane after their whole combination spun through 180. Someone at Placemakers (just before that roundabout we were exiting) had loaned them the trailer and loaded it with the wood hanging several meters out over the back, or it shifted there. And the big silver SUV between us and the ambulance in the pic is the Pathfinder (or similar big Nissan) that was following us and had the best view of the action.

996tnz

Thanks Macca. Someone had called an ambulance already and asked me if I wanted to cancel it - as we were all out of the car and safely behind the armco - but I had the medics check out Yi and the kids just to be safe. Nothing more than a mild bump and one minor dose of seatbelt rash. The cops commented on how far I'd gone but the longer you can delay impact, the shallower the angle, and the more speed you can lose prior, the better. By the time the car stopped we'd avoided the kind of Gs that would do damage to anyone so I kept calm, chucked on the hazards, switched her off after checking for traffic and got the kids out and behind the barrier with Yi. Me staying calm helped them stay calm too I think.

I love the waistline of the Evoque (and the rest of its look) but I guess it doesn't aid vision if that's Jo's objection? Don't love the silly dial for the auto selector, but they are otherwise nice to drive and look and feel special.

peterC2S

Macca - going back a few pages now but...

Get Jo the Golf. Don't equivocate, don't use man maths, just do it. Either keep the Alfa or the RS (personally I'd keep the RS...)

It'll be worth it, trust me!!

Macca

Pete...you are probably right!

Obsessed

Walter that's a scary situation and thanks for the write-up. It's good to read about these things I think, in the hope that some bits of wisdom might stick in my subconscious. How long do you think it took from start to finish?

kiwi 911

Pete usually is - happy wife - happy life..............

peterC2S

The quote is correct. I am frequently wrong!

Pel

hahaha fell off my chair!

Get the Silver Golf, keep it for 3 - 5 years, will be the cheapest motoring you have, dollars and sanity wise.

Between Dave, Doug, Mark, Brendon, Chris, Sam, Jason, yourself & I, air cooled group has a good pool, provided we get 50% sign up. There's plenty of other air cooled cars/owners however for most air cooled owners it's not track performance that's the attraction, the "red mist" air cooled owner is shrinking, I think Pauls SC was a high 18, I don't think Craig has pushed it below 26, understandable as these cars are viewed as investments or at least depreciation proof if looked after nowadays. Keen to keep running the SC provided we keep getting the numbers, the hairpins at Taupo are tricky in the SC, not enough torque for 3rd but too fast for 2nd, need to hook the aim up to see which works best.

Difference is, if you buy a new car she doesn't see 30k pa depreciation leave the account every year. Madness considering the capital outlay of new a car, but probably the only way save a monthly dustup over vehicle expenditure, tyres etc aside.

Looks like a nice car, people will moan, but when a comparable 3.2 Coupe is 25k more nowadays, 55-60k is probably where the market sits. Most air cooled cars/owners are weekend cruisers now, I don't see why having a hard top with no sunroof matters, a targa or cab is arguably more fit for purpose, still pulls and makes the same sound in straight line.

996tnz

From the moment he swerved at 30 odd degrees towards our lane until impact was about a second (say 6m at what had been a parallel closing speed of 75-60 = 15kph meant it would have taken about 1.4s to draw level with him if we each proceeded at those constant speeds in our lanes - but he slewed violently sideways - slowing him down - and I gunned it for the gap as that was a better bet than us becoming an Audi sandwich between him and the following Pathfinder). So little more than a second. With the trailer slinging him across he seemed to turn into us faster than a crazed idiot could have managed to do deliberately. Imagine passing a car, and just as you reach their back bumper, they swerve hard into you. I'd probably caught a wobble worsening out of the corner of my eye so was more alert than usual but even in race it takes me about 250 ms or so to initiate a steering reaction (done the slow motions to check) and fastest eye-foot reaction time is about 300ms. So about 700 to 800ms of actual physical response before getting hit. My habit during emergency lane change style manouevres is to left foot tap the brakes momentarily to transfer weight forward (just a tiny short sharp shock) for better steering grip then accelerate through the rest of the manouevre with maybe another slight tap on recovery but even immediately afterward I couldn't recall if I tapped them or not. There wasn't more than a metre or so of lane space out right for us to use but I do know that we got to the extreme right of our lane under full power and straightened out with our nose in the clear before he hit us amidships on the left, so I suspect time at gymkhanas and racetracks wasn't wasted.

We were already accelerating hard when it started but flooring it through the gap and then to keep control coming back off the berm onto the road meant we were probably doing about 90kph when back on, and headed a bit left as I started to brake while also fighting to have her make the right hand curve.

As mentioned, with both right wheels damaged I couldn't brake more than about 30% while keeping her the right way around but at the point where I had no choice but to let her swap ends she was probably down to 60 or 70kph or so and we were about 80m past the impact zone so about 3 seconds further along. The car lost some speed coming around and I got better braking with her back to front (broken control arm but no flat on the rear, and handbrake boosted) even while still trying to keep her on the road so from the spin to the minor barrier bounce and stop would've been maybe another three seconds. Which probably means my diagram is a little off in its proportions (reverse travel was half the total recovery time but probably only a third or so of the total recovery distance).

I couldn't find another trailer on YouTube as badly rear-weighted (and it wasn't obvious from behind). He was also accelerating downhill and then probably did something dumb like brake hard when he got out of shape while we were passing, so the vids are not as sudden an onset but you can get some idea from these clips of how cars can get thrown about by trailers:

Starting with an explanatory demo:

kiwi 911

On the cab front - this would have been my dream garage as a 10 yr old, it was a great movie.


Got the red one, just need to work on getting the black one.........