Driven by liquid Middle East gold

CYCLIST Abbott and farmer Truss have declared war on average road-going Australians.

New Car Plus has a 620kW, 4.7-litre twin-supercharged V8 Koenigsegg CCX, which would have

MY fellow Australians, it’s time (and other cliches) to stand together against the tyranny being wrought by cyclist Abbott and farmer Truss. These two have declared war on average road-going Australians.

On the night before the government brought down its so-called “budget”, hundreds of thousand of cars lined up for hours outside petrol stations knowing full well their elected officials had once again condemned them to an eternity of paying more for liquid Middle East gold.

How bad are some motorists doing it? A minute after the bad news streamed out of the jaws of the cigarred one, my friend put his car up for sale. In fact, he (not Joe H) immediately rang David Wheatley at online sales outfit New Car Plus and said: “Dave, I’ve had it with these galoots in Canberra, take a mill off my car and just sell it.”

Yes, readers, you know us here at the motoring section. We are always keeping our eyes out for bargains for you and today is no exception. Write this down. Remember, first to the phone gets the car.

What we have on offer this morning is a 2008 Koenigsegg CCX. Now I know that last year I tried to tip you into the Ferrari 458 Italia, but I have to admit that while the Fezza tries really hard, it does take 3.4 seconds to get to 100km/h. The Koenigsegg takes 2.9 seconds and soon after you are cruising at a little over 410km/h. In fact, one of our readers in Texas took out the world record for the highest speeding fine on this planet when the local fun police gave him a ticket for travelling at 390km/h in his Koenigsegg.

Brand new six years ago, this Swedish super egg would have cost you $2.1 million. Today you’d have to pay nearly $3m for a new one. Get on the blower to Wheatley and he’ll give you the 620kW, 4.7-litre twin-supercharged V8, one-owner hypercar with only 281km on the clock for just over a mill.

In even better news, it’s only six more sleeps to the start of Shitbox Rally 2014. Yes, 500 drivers, 250 cars costing no more than $1000 each, roaring the 3500km from Perth to Darwin along some of Australia’s most deserted and dusty roads.

Don’t think we are slouches at the tech caper here. You will be able to follow The Weekend Australian motoring team of Tom and John Connolly live at the website below and on The Weekend Australian Motoring Shitbox Rally page and on Twitter @connollyshitbox. Live means we will be trying to post videos, audios, tweets, photos.

That’s if Tom can get me on the Google.

Talking of car prices, a very insightful interview with Simon Kidston, collector car adviser to the mega wealthy, in Sports Car Market magazine. Asked whether we are in a market bubble, he says “cars have gone up in value; money has gone down”.

“The 1987 stockmarket collapse and Enzo Ferrari’s death the following summer was interpreted by some as a quasi-mystical sign, so traditional money looked for new homes and decided that investing in Ferraris would be the next big thing.” Kidston quotes economist Robert Shiller to infer we are in a bubble exacerbated by media coverage. Talking about the new wave of classic-car dealers, he pointedly remarks, “They’ve jumped on the bandwagon but luckily for them their new-found clients know even less about cars than they do.”

Follow the rally at theaustralian.com.au/executive-living

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