God help America

[spacesailor]

Ditch the UTE ! .

Get a PRIME- MOVER , 

It Will move your house .

spacesailor

[Jerry_Atrick]

7 hours ago, kgwilson said:

These monster Utes are useless at everything except being able to tow 4.5 tonnes so caravans have grown to suit.

They are also good for helping insecure urban/suburban men confirm their insecurity.

Edited August 12, 2023 by Jerry_Atrick

[Jerry_Atrick]

3 hours ago, spacesailor said:

Ditch the UTE ! .

Get a PRIME- MOVER , 

It Will move your house .

spacesailor

Indeed.. or you could pop on a trailer and make it your house.

[willedoo]

12 hours ago, kgwilson said:

The thing is that even normal Utes have grown drmatically in the last 10 years. Hilux, Triton Ranger & B50s plus the Chinese additions are all much larger than they used to be.

My twenty year old Holden Rodeo looks like a midget compared to today's equivalent 4 cylinder 4x4 utes. I doubt they have any bigger capacity, just bigger bodies. I always though it was marketing to produce a poor man's F truck to grab a slice of that market. Once one or two went big, the others had to follow suit to compete. The visibility in some of them is woeful.

[red750]

And the visibilty from small cars like my Festiva is woeful when one is next to you, especially in parking lots.

[onetrack]

Spacey, you mean - like this one? I reckon I could buy a house in a number of country towns for the money they want for this Yankee POS.

 

https://www.gumtree.com.au/s-ad/sunbury/cars-vans-utes/ford-f450-platinum-2022/1313897865

[Jerry_Atrick]

They are completely nuts anbd just phallic symbols of Boganity. In a city or even major rural town, there is no need for one, except to tow the boat or van on a holiday; or work reasons but there are far better designed vehicles than these to tow/carry the capacity required. I have a Volvo XC90. I bought it while we lived in London, but knowing we were moving to the country and looking for a small holding. Ity has come in handy - but the amount of times I have needed it, even on the small holdingI can probably count on my fingers and toes. In London, we had small  cars.

 

I like taking the XC90 (now 10 years old) to London as on the motorway, it is far more comfy than the mini. Believe it or not, it is probably slightly better on fuel economy as well  (XC90 diesel; Mini Countryman - Petrol). But, once in London and parking, I curse the bloody XC90.

 

When I get back to Aus, if we live in a city, then we are not even bothering with a car. Between buses, trains, trams and bikes, should be able to get to most places conveniently. If I want to drive somewhere for a weekend, will hire a car, or if in Melbourne, nick my niece's car.

 

When I lived in Melb before leaving for the UK- I had 4x4s.. FJ55, MQ Patrol, HJ60 Cruiser, and Daihatsu Feroza. I did cop a bit of flack for them, but they were used for their intended purpose almost every weekend - in the Toolangi area east if Melbourne, the Dandenong rages, the wester desert, and the Otways. When I took the Feroza in for a service and asked the service fella to replace the bent aerial he assumed it was kids vandalising it. When I told him I broke it 4x4in by stupidly forgetting to retract it (it was a manual telescopic aerial), he expressed profound disbelief that anyone took them 4x4-ing.

 

When I returned to Aus back in 2003, I had my old Commodore that I purchased before I origtinally emigrated. One of the conditions of coming to Aus was that we would get a 4x4. I got LWB Suzi Troop Carrie - it was 3L petrol of about 1996 vintage (same as the Commodire come to think about it). It was actually a great city car come to think of it; crove better than the Commodore, comfy as anything, well appointed - but it was a little thirstier than the 3.8l Commodore. Dutifully, I took the partner semi-4x4ing - a muddy track outside Bendigo (we started our Aussie life in Bendigo). We got through it no worries, and it was hardly even bumpy, but that was the end of our 4x4 adventures - she hated not having perfect grip on the tarmac. It spooked her, even though she didn't even feel a need to go for the "Oh Ship!" (aka grab) bar. 

Edited August 12, 2023 by Jerry_Atrick

[old man emu]

Call that a ute? 

 

 

THAT'S a ute  

[red750]

I was beside a Platinum in Ringwood yesterday. It was like a bl**dy elephant.

[willedoo]

The closest I've been to the big utes is the Ford F-250 when a couple of blokes I worked for had them. They both had the V8 7 litre diesel with the 6 speed manual gearbox. One was in standard configuration with a well back and was the field crew boss's vehicle. It had good load and towing capacity, but was a bit impractical and was more just a boss's toy. You could be driving at 80kph on a dirt road and fishtail the rear end if you gave it too much throttle. One problem with it was reliability; for an expensive vehicle, it tended to have too many embarrassing breakdowns.

 

The other F-250 was more practical. It was privately imported as a LHD, then converted to RHD, stretched and built as a dual cab with a tray back. It also had the rear suspension beefed up with a lazy axle fitted for load carrying capacity. The boss said it was cheaper to import it and get it all done privately than have Ford in Australia do it. From memory, he saved about $20,000 getting it all done himself. It was quite a handy vehicle as he used it to do small supply runs out into the desert and the dual cab meant he could also rotate crew members while he was at it, if need be. He could basically carry the same load as a Toyota plus trailer and also had the benefit of a dual cab capacity.

 

It was ideal for those times when critical parts needed to be driven out to the field and some general supplies could be transported as well, and maybe a bloke or two. At other times, he would do a full supply run with a Kenworth semi which was a much slower and more involved adventure. For that application, the F-250 was ideal. For the other unmodified one, I think it was just a toy. One saving grace is that they had the same fuel consumption whether loaded, towing or empty, about 15mpg. You could tow caravans or carry loads and it wouldn't cost any more in fuel. One thing I remember about the unmodified single cab Ford was that it wasn't good on sand dunes due to it's heavier weight than the Toyotas and Nissans. For desert work, it was just a show pony.

[spacesailor]

Ditch the UTE ! .

Get a PRIME- MOVER , 

It Will move your 5th wheeler house .

 

spacesailor

[red750]

This combo is regularly parked in front of the house opposite my place.

 

[old man emu]

Those pictures help me explain to you why I think caravanners on rural highways are barnacles on the arsehole of Progress.

[nomadpete]

9 minutes ago, old man emu said:

Those pictures help me explain to you why I think caravanners on rural highways are barnacles on the arsehole of Progress.

Don't blame the caravanners. Blame the successive governments for failing to make the big businesses / miners pay their fair share of taxes. Which might have made it possible to build decent highways.

[Jerry_Atrick]

9 hours ago, red750 said:

This combo is regularly parked in front of the house opposite my place.

 

Can be thankful this fella didnt rock up:

 

[red750]

Are Americans 'over the top' with displaying the flag?

 

[kgwilson]

They are generally over patriotic but it is implanted in them from an early age. I watched some of the Oshkosh air shows and the overly patriotic commentary as well as all american music blasting from the PA system was almost sickening. They played the national anthem many times and they all stand with hand on heart. In the suburbs you see US flags flying from houses everywhere. They go on about their freedom all the time but have the highest incarceration rate in the world and the worst gun violence anywhere. A large percentade of the population knows nothing about anywhere else in the world.

[Jerry_Atrick]

It's called indoctrination - aka brainwashing...

 

I remember the first time I went to a local college basketball game in Bismarck, BD. I struggled to contain my laughter when they all stood up and put their hands on ther hearts

 

Grown adults, all of 'em

[Old Koreelah]

5 hours ago, Jerry_Atrick said:

It's called indoctrination - aka brainwashing...

 

I remember the first time I went to a local college basketball game in Bismarck, BD. I struggled to contain my laughter when they all stood up and put their hands on ther hearts…

We once had a pair of German exchange students who had a similar reaction to our school’s Monday morning ritual of playing the National Anthem (a ceremony imposed on us around the time of Howard’s enthusiastic embrace of Bush’s disastrous Iraq War.)

[pmccarthy]

At our NSW primary school we marched to assembly once a week, stood at attention, hoisted the flag and recited "I honour my god, I serve my queen, I salute my flag".

[nomadpete]

14 minutes ago, pmccarthy said:

At our NSW primary school we marched to assembly once a week, stood at attention, hoisted the flag and recited "I honour my god, I serve my queen, I salute my flag".

Yes, same here. And after swearing our loyalty, we marched to our rooms in single file, to the beat of a drum.

 

I guess the present generation would see it as very militaristic.

[Jerry_Atrick]

Not just the present generation

 

In Vic, I went to primary school until 1977. Only at one of my three schools did we have a daily assembly where we sang the then national anthem. 

 

In secondary school, again at only one of the three I went to did we have regular assemblies - they were weekly and we had to sing in choir- mainly motivational or propaganda type tunes - sometimes hymns (it was a private Anglican school)

[pmccarthy]

I loved Cadets - bayonet drill, firing the Lee-Enfield and Bren, night manoeuvres with parachute flares and so on. I was lucky to avoid Vietnam (number wasn't drawn) where I would have found out the reality of military life.

[Bruce Tuncks]

Me too,pmc.  My number could have come out but didnt. My mate Graham had his number come up though, but they didn't send him anywhere. He had an IQ about 200 and my theory is that they didn't want the bad publicity of getting their smartest new recruit killed.

Good stuff you did in the cadets, there were no cadets in Alice Springs in those days. ( Graham came second in the state of SA from a school that hardly got an "A" in yr 11.

[onetrack]

14 minutes ago, pmccarthy said:

I was lucky to avoid Vietnam (number wasn't drawn) where I would have found out the reality of military life.

A place where you wouldn't have found any atheists in foxholes? (when there was incoming fire, mortars or artillery)

 

I was going through the UNSW Vietnam Battle map a day or two ago, and I was quite amazed to find one infantry casualty was due to a tree falling on him during a contact!