AUTO MANIA

by Dr. Iain Corness
Pattaya Kart Speedway this Sunday

The 5th round of the Thailand Go-kart championships is being held in Pattaya this Sunday at the Pattaya Kart Speedway. And the hottest tip? A young 13-year-old girl called Anna, who is Andy Scheidegger’s adopted daughter. Now Anna is literally pint sized (or even half pint) and I have also seen Anna on the track. Last year she challenged my Aussie prot้g้, Julian Harburg, the ex Australian Porsche Cup winner and Julian had to pull back. Anna may be small, but she is very aggressive on the track, thinking nothing of doing some wheel banging with the experienced Aussie driver. On her second only championship meeting she was the winner in her class and my money’s on her for a win at her home track.

If you do not know where Andy Scheidegger’s Pattaya Kart Speedway is located, then shame on you! It is probably the best circuit in Pattaya (but I admit I have not tried them all) and has the fastest hire karts in the world. It is off Thepprasit Road (the soi is almost opposite the 7-11 where Soi 17 joins Thepprasit) and is next to Bungee Jump and Paintball Park.
We’re not the only country with a “grey import” problem

Last year we had the situation in this country where warranties were in doubt with grey import motor vehicles. That situation has died down, but “we are not alone”, as Steven Spielberg would say. America is now being threatened with grey imports from Canada and this has been so prevalent that the Chrysler group now says it will not honour warranties on 2003 cars and trucks bought in to the States through unauthorized channels.

This is always a vexed problem. It is a Chrysler. It is new. If it is as good as the manufacturer says it is, then surely warranty goes with the vehicle? Unfortunately, this is not so, because part of the sticker price incorporates the costs involved in those warranties. In the case of a grey import, that portion of the purchase price does not come back to the servicing dealer network, hence the stance taken by Chrysler.

Autotrivia Quiz

Last week I asked you to have a look at this photograph. This is an old Fiat and it took the world land speed record in 1924 at almost 235 kph (or 146 mph in the old money). It was driven by Ernest Eldridge who even had a passenger with him. The question was what was significant about the venue?

The answer was that it was the last time a World Land Speed record was set on an ordinary tree lined road. All the others following were done on special saltpans and such.

So to this week and another picture for you to identify. This car was rear engined and had a 3.4 litre V8. No more clues, you’re all getting too good!For the Automania FREE beer this week, be the first correct answer to fax 427 596 or email automania@ pattayamail.com

Good luck!
International drivers licenses

I recently made a quick trip to the UK. While over there I arranged to have a drive of a Noble M12 GTO, a rather fast British supercar. However, when I looked for my drivers license, I had a problem - my Aussie one had expired, and I could see that the Brit coppers were not likely to accept my green laminated cardboard Thai license which looks the greatest “make it yourself-er” of all time.

Contact was made with the Australian Embassy in Bangers who said I would have to fill out forms for the Road Transport Authority in Oz, pay them $80 and I could get the Oz license extended. All very easy, the forms available off the net and everything. Looked good till I tried to access the net address - always down. Since I was starting to run out of time, it was on to Plan B.

Plan B was to get an International Drivers License issued in Thailand. This is possible, show your ID card, house papers and drivers license and it is issued by the Department of Transport, and you can even get the nice people at the Royal Automobile Association of Thailand (RAAT) to do it for you. And only 800 baht - what a bargain!

I went up to Bangers to the RAAT, showed them my passport, work permit, bills with my name and address on them and recent photographs of my head in assorted sizes. The 800 baht was extracted and we were looking good - until the girl came back to say that they couldn’t do it because my Thai license was only “temporary”. Yes, my Thai license was only six months old and for the first year it is “temporary” only.

Plan C was next. Way back in the dim dark distant ages, when Adam played full back for Jerusalem, I did actually have a British drivers license. This I had taken out in 1968 when it was always necessary to have several licenses so you could show the coppers a different one each time and you didn’t rack up too many points on one permit. My Brit friends all told me that the Pommy license was good till I was 70 years old, all I had to do was to say I had lost it (which I had) and they would replace it in a couple of days! Looking good!

Japan car makers going Banzai

Is the motor vehicle recession over? The major Japanese car manufacturers are all claiming big profits, or profits after several successive losses in the past few years, so Japan is looking good.

According to Automotive News in America, Toyota claimed an operating profit of $8.43 billion, which was the highest operating profit ever for any Japanese company in any industry.

Mitsubishi posted a net profit of $84.5 million after a net loss of $2.1 billion last year, easily meeting the Mitsubishi Turnaround Plan’s target of breakeven for the year. Operating profit swung $301.9 million into the black from a loss of $554.3 million previously. Mitsubishi said its three-year goal of slashing purchasing costs by 15 percent would be surpassed, and the cuts probably would end up at about 20 percent.

Mazda and this Ford Motor Co. affiliate swung to a net profit of $66.3 million from a loss of $1.2 billion a year earlier. Operating profit swung to a gain of $214.3 million from a year-earlier loss of $112.1 million.

Subaru’s net profit rose 33.8 percent from a year earlier to $227.3 million, a record revenue. The company said results benefited from a $244.7 million currency gain and a 10 percent rise in North American unit sales.

Honda also recorded profits in the past fiscal year, so the troubled US auto industry should perhaps look carefully at their operations and work out where they are going wrong.

A sock under the bed ain’t such a bad idea after all!

Consumer fraud is a problem, in fact, identity theft was the most common type of consumer fraud complaint in 2001, according to U.S. Federal Trade Commission statistics. Hijacking of personal information for fraud or theft generated 85,000 complaints filed with the Federal Trade Commission in 2001 and was up sharply from the previous year.

So what is the relationship to the auto industry? Well, Ford Credit, the consumer financiers have just had to tell 13,000 people of credit fraud risk, caused by hackers getting into their data base in America. According to Reuters, Ford sent letters last week to the 13,000 people, of whom 400 were Ford Credit customers, warning them that Social Security numbers, bank and credit card account information and other data may have been copied. The data in the reports could be used for any number of crimes, especially getting credit cards under false names.

Ford Credit said a person, or group, posing as its Grand Rapids, Michigan, office accessed the reports between April 2001 and February of this year. The scheme was uncovered after they found the hackers were using different software from than that used by Ford.

Has anyone got a sock without holes in the toes?

Jaguar gets cold feet over the F-Type

The Jaguar marque, which was one of the high flyers in the Premier Automotive Group division of Ford Motor Corp, has just done a U-turn on the F-Type which was shown in prototype form in auto shows in America. From a position of “definitely for production”, the F-Type project has been committed to the back burner.

Jaguar F-Type

With Reitzle having gone, the bean counters reign supreme and the F-Type roadster is the first casualty. According to a Jaguar spokesman Simon Sproule, “Jaguar is still emotionally wedded to doing the F-Type. We just need to do other things more urgently.” Apparently Jaguar has 17 product programmes coming in the next four years. They include redesigns of the XJ sedan, XK grand-touring convertible and the S-Type - but no F-Type. I do not predict great things for Jaguar. I think the corporate financial thinking is going to knock the nuts off the once proud Jaguar cat!