Hit The Road & Track, Jack

Sydney Morning Herald

Friday November 27, 1998

with Tony Davis

America's Road & Track magazine has always been a singular publication aimed squarely at car enthusiasts.

The US market is so large, of course, that even a niche publication can command a few hundred thousand sales per month - and Road &Track sells 750,000.

A child of the late 1940s, Road & Track established a practice of illustrating its stories with superb drawings and paintings as well as photo- graphs. It has even dabbled with woodblock prints and sculptures.

Now the large-format hardback book 50 Years of Road & Track - The Art of the Automotive takes you through the visual highlights.

Its 264 pages contain hundreds of captioned photos and illustrations and are guaranteed to have you browsing for hours.

Our copy (stickered at $65) was from MotorBooks, 9909 1144.

TORMINA

TORANA

Are you over feeling warm and gooey about Holden yet? You've still got two days left before the actual 50th anniversary, at which point Holden will wind its nostalgia-meter to the max, recreate the original 1948 launch ceremony and generally try to ensure the entire country is just soggy with sentiment for "Our Very Own".

Meanwhile, model-maker Trax leaps into the fray with a 1:43 scale Holden - the original hot Torana, the LC GTR XU-1 of 1971. It's available at $32.95 in two original (and daftly named) colours: Baroda Silver and Tormina Aqua. Phone 1800 635 508.

THEM 2

Self-confessed pedant Eliot Cohen writes about Damon Albarn and Blur being the only band to use Audi's Vorsprung durch Technik in a song (Car Culture, last week). U2, he corrects, used it in the first line of the title track of Zooropa:

Zooropa ... Vorsprung durch Technik. Zooropa ... be all that you can be.

Cohen adds that Zooropa was released in Australia on July 5, 1993. In our defence, we qualified our statement with "as far as we know". We now know further.

WILD ROVERS

Hurry on down to Leichhardt on Sunday for the 1998 Concours d'Elegance of the Rover Owners Club of NSW.

About 100 Rovers will be there, most of them built in the 1950s and 1960s but some dating back before WWII. A score of other British car clubs have been invited.

Haven't sold you yet? How about this: the club has booked the Sydney Morris Dancers and the Parramatta City Band to join the action! The venue is Orange Grove Public School, Perry Street, Leichhardt, from 10 am to 4 pm. Phone 9558 9674.

Quote unquote

"To tire of a Holden V8 ute is to tire of life." - International television presenter H.G. Nelson speaks his mind on Planet Norwich (1998).

SEASON'S START (AND FINNISH)

You might think it a little late to start the 1998 Formula One season, but not so the people at Psygnosis.

They've just launched Formula 1 98, an update of one of our favourite motor sport simulators for PlayStation. New features include improved graphics, the capacity for four player link-up and what Psygnosis calls "a motion-captured pit crew who will communicate with you" ("you're parked on my foot, you berk").

All the 1998 cars are there, complete with the 1998 spec grooved tyres, though neatly stripped of cigarette signage.

Jacques Villeneuve? is again the only driver who wouldn't give permission for his name to be used. This is ironic, since he learned several of the circuits on a computer game during his debut season.

Murray Walker and Martin Brundle again do the English language commentary. However, if you switch to the Finnish setting at boot-up you can hear Martti Kyllonen and Erkki Mustakari. (No, we don't know who they are either, but they get very excited when Mika Hakkinen does well.)

Formula 1 98 for PlayStation, rrp $89.95, is available from all major retailers. We're told that a PC version will follow in early 1999. This will have vegetarian women from non-European backgrounds driving solar-powered vehicles. Either that or it will run on personal computers.