Mercedes a better way to spend your airport carparking bucks

YOU can buy a lot of car for the price of leaving your own ride at Sydney or Melbourne airport for a week.

The 1910 Fiat Tipo 76, also known as The Beast of Turin.

WOULD you prefer to park your car for a week at Sydney or Melbourne airport, or a brand new Mercedes CLA 45 AMG, the world’s fastest four-cylinder sedan, with 265kW, lots of AMG boy/girl racer signs and HSV GTS acceleration?

When you turn up at the airport to leave your car for a week, Virgin, Qantas and the airport owners reach into your pocket and extract $476, more than you’ll pay a week to own a CLA AMG. You can probably squeeze into an M3 and scare the hell out of the rellies at Xmas for close to the same money.

Of course there’s lots of better stuff you can buy for $476 than a bit of cement at Tulla or Mascot. How about a few laps around Bathurst in a V8 with Fabian Coulthard, John Bowe or Russell Ingall or all three. Less than $300 gets you breakfast, a meet and greet with one of the lads, a photo, cap and a blast around the mountain. Organisers, V8Race (v8race.com), will ensure your breakfast comes up well before The Dipper.

Or for $129 the solution to one of the first world’s most pressing problems. You know when you are coming back to your car after a day at the beach. Your feet are blistered from walking on the sand and tar. The nippers are screaming for ice creams and the matches are so wet you can’t light your first ciggy for four hours. Then you open the door to the car and out pumps enough hot air to roast a reindeer. You fervently pray you didn’t leave the dog or one of the in-laws in there.

What’s worse is all that hot air contains a “unique cocktail of hundreds of toxic chemicals that off-gas in small, confined spaces”. Jeff Gearhart, research director at the Ecology Center says there are more than 275 different chemicals in car interiors.

“Some chemicals of concern include bromine from brominated flame retardants which are added to plastics to make them less flammable, chlorine used for polyvinyl chloride used for plastics and windshields, lead, and heavy metals. Exposure to brominated flame retardants and PVCs has been tied to thyroid problems, learning and memory impairment, decreased fertility, and behavioural changes, decreased fertility and liver, testes, thyroid, ovaries, kidneys and blood problems.”

Well Kevin Sun (no, I didn’t make this bit up) sells a solar powered ventilator that vents out hot air in cars so you won’t be poisoned or have crook testes. (kulcar.com.au).

Finally, England’s Duncan Pittaway will gladly start up his 1910 Fiat Tipo 76 for you for $476. Lovingly called The Beast of Turin, this 225kW, 28.5-litre, four-cylinder, overhead cam monster was good for 215km/h. Giovanni Agnelli built it to take on the Blitzen Benz. The BB, as Giovanni and I used to call it, was an early fore runner of the Mercedes CLA 45 AMG. The BB also had four cylinders. Indy driver Bob Burman hit 228km/h in one at Daytona Beach, setting a world land speed record.

There were only two Beasts built. Dunc got the chassis from one back from Australia, the engine from the other from the scrapheap and this year started the engine for the first time in 100 years. Go immediately to grrc.goodwood.com/race/historic to watch and more importantly listen to the greatest music you’ll ever hear.

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