Porsche Advice

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Convertibles have a short shelf-life, pick your summer outfit from these drop-tops.

What is a kit car?A kit car is a type of vehicle either built at home or in a small workshop using components sourced from other vehicles, and are often designed to look like a fancier, more expensive vehicle.At one point in Australia’s motoring history the kit car industry was a booming business. Beginning in post-war years, handy people who weren’t prepared to get grimy scrounging wrecking yards to build a hot rod could order a set of plans, or parts in kit form, to build a vehicle at home.The Lotus 7 was thought to be among the first cars sold in kit form, as a way of cheapening the cost of buying the vehicle and avoiding delays in having Lotus assemble a running, driving car. The popularity of the 7 led to a whole class of clubman vehicles that are all about home-built super-lightweight fun.Kit cars in Australia back in the day would see punters order the bare bones parts of the vehicle, sometimes including the chassis and body, which would be supplied unfinished. These DIY handymen would then find the drivetrain from popular makes and models.For those not so talented on the tools, a kit car can be more of a custom vehicle based off a cheap, commonly available donor like the Toyota Celica or Volkswagen Beetle, with a modified body fitted on top. These were often offered as a drive-in, drive-out customisation for client’s existing vehicles by companies like Adelaide’s Creative Cars.Creative Cars sold kits to turn a Beetle into a Porsche 911 lookalike called the Poraga and Porerra, or a Celica dressed as a Ferrari 308 called the Cerino, among others. The latter was initially known as the Ferrino, until Ferrari objected to the name. These weren’t cheap, with the Poraga conversion costing $10,000 back in the mid-1980s!However, the kit car industry was impacted as road rules were created to control the types of cars allowed on Australian roads. While it was OK in the 1950s for anyone to put whatever engine into another type of chassis and fit their own, home-made body on top, by the early 1980s we had federal laws setting a minimum standard for cars being brought into Australia to be sold as road cars (Australian Design Rules), and then we had ever-tightening state-based laws controlling what modifications were permitted for road-going vehicles.By the late 1980s kit cars were mostly sold as replicas of rare 1960s exotic cars like the Ford GT40, Shelby Cobra and Ferrari 250 GTO. Sometimes these cars could be ordered as a turn-key car, or a DIY kit to be built at home to the owner’s exact specifications. However as road regulations tightened through the 1990s, the cost of gaining registration approval for road use skyrocketed to over $300,000 per-car (depending on the state the vehicle needed to be registered in).These costs came as the vehicle had to be built to the same standards as a modern car, which is incredibly difficult in a vehicle built at home to replicate a 1960s car, and then approved by a registered engineering signatory who had a process of inspecting and testing the vehicle. As laws are fluid and constantly changing, many kit cars end up unfinished as owners find it difficult to navigate a highly complex and expensive process. This is why kit cars are all but extinct now in Australia.The good news is there are many ways to build a kit car today, if you have plenty of dollars in the bank and can set aside several years to step through the whole process. For this reason, many people choose to customise their car in a more traditional hot rod-style, rather than building a complete vehicle from the ground-up.Today you can buy car body kits online for a variety of budgets. Among the most popular are the Japanese “Rocket Bunny Pandem” kits from TRA Kyoto’s Kei Miura. Featuring fat, 80s-style rivet-on boxed wide-body guards, deep front bumper extensions, and his trademark duck-tail spoiler, they end a massively aggressive race flair to otherwise common sports cars.Talk to any late-model tuner car enthusiast and they’ll tell you the hottest cars in their scene are Toyota 86 Rocket Bunny, S14 Rocket Bunny Silvia, S15 Rocket Bunny Silvia, an RX-7 Rocket Bunny, or a 350Z Rocket Bunny. They rarely look anything like the original car and could almost be considered a kit car, especially with the popularity of power-adders like the many Toyota 86 turbo kits on offer.For those who are feeling really adventurous there is the Vaydor, which is a drastic restyling of a core Nissan/Infiniti G35 Skyline. There is no firm confirmation if the Vaydor G35 is a road legal kit cars in Australia, so don’t spend your pennies there without doing a lot of research first.The booming market is in electric car kit swaps, where a petrol or diesel drivetrain is replaced with an electric one. Again, legalities concerning these modifications aren’t super-well-understood yet but this is a potential area to keep an eye on if you want a silent-running car but can’t afford a Tesla, or don’t want to give up your favourite ride. 

Right off the top of your head, tell us, who is the most beautiful woman on the planet right now? We’ll give you five seconds.

Purchase price is only half the battle in ownership — these are the champions come trade-in time. Buying the right new car can save you thousands of dollars. With depreciation tearing the largest chunk out of any motoring budget, easily beating the costs of fuel or servicing or insurance, it pays to go with a

Here's a list of things you might not know about Mark Webber...1. How old is Mark Webber?42. He turns 43 on August 27, which also makes him a Virgo.2. How tall is Mark Webber?184cm or 6 feet on the old scale. This height is relatively tall for a racing driver which presented a challenge for Mark in being able to find a comfortable seating position in single-seaters. From Formula Ford to Formula One, the long-limb Aussie was always marginal on cockpit comfort, which makes his achievements even more impressive.3. Where is Mark Webber from?A small NSW regional town called Queanbeyan, with a population of less than 40,000. It’s located on the banks of the Queanbeyan River. In fact, this name evolved from the Aboriginal word ‘quinbean’ meaning ‘clear waters’.4. Where does Mark Webber live?A small village called Aston Clinton in Buckinghamshire, UK with a population of less than 4000. Must be something special about growing up in a small town which stays with you. He also owns a home at Noosa in Queensland.5. How many Formula One races did Mark Webber win?A total of nine Grand Prix wins from 215 starts, in an F1 career which started in 2002 and ended in 2013. He also scored 42 podium finishes, 13 pole positions and 19 fastest race laps.6. What was Mark Webber’s best result in a Formula One championship?Third and he did it three times in 2010, 2011 and 2013. Beyond F1 he also drove for Porsche in the FIA World Endurance Championship, which he jointly won in 2015 with Timo Bernhard and Brendon Hartley.7. Which teams did Mark Webber drive for in Formula One?Minardi (owned at the time by fellow Aussie Paul Stoddart), Jaguar, Williams and Red Bull as team-mate to Sebastian Vettel.8. What are the most memorable moments from Mark Webber’s Formula One career?His Formula One debut in 2002 which occurred at his home event - the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne. Minardi was a struggling back-marker team but Webber showed ‘Aussie grit’ by finishing in a fighting fifth place, after starting 18th out of 22 cars and nursing a broken differential. At that time, he became only the fourth Aussie driver to have scored F1 world championship points. He was also twice winner of the prestigious Monaco Grand Prix.9. What were the biggest crashes of Mark Webber’s career?These all occurred in sports car racing. At Le Mans in 1999 he was driving for the Mercedes-AMG team. During practice for the famous 24-hour race, his car suddenly became airborne on Mulsanne Straight at more than 300km/h and did a somersault in mid-air before crashing heavily. A new car was prepared for the race but Webber suffered the same terrifying high-speed flip during the pre-race warm-up. Another car driven by team-mate Peter Dumbreck suffered the same fate a few hours into the race, which forced Mercedes-Benz to cancel its sports car program.Fortunately, Webber (and Dumbreck) escaped uninjured from these fearful accidents which were blamed on an aerodynamic imbalance in the German cars.Webber survived another huge crash driving for Porsche in the 2014 World Endurance Championship. This high-speed accident, which occurred when Webber was passing a slower Ferrari, resulted in his Porsche literally breaking in two. Amazingly, he also avoided serious injury.10. What is Mark Webber’s net worth?Forbes ranks his estimated net worth at around $10 million.11. Who are Mark Webber’s parents?Alan and Diane Webber. Alan owned a Yamaha motorcycle dealership in Queanbeyan when Mark was growing up which is why he spent a lot of his early years riding dirt bikes.12. Who is Mark Webber’s wife?British-born Ann Neal. She emigrated to Australia in the early 1990s where she met Mark in 1994.13. What is the age difference between Ann and Mark?Ann is 13 years older which caused some friction early in their relationship, particularly with Mark’s mum Diane who initially did not approve of her son having a much older woman as his partner.14: Does Mark Webber have any children?Ann Neal has a son from a former relationship named Luke Barrett. There was a story doing the rounds a few years ago which claimed that Mark and his wife Ann were celebrating the arrival of a daughter, which he chose to name ‘GT3’. The story was published on April 1…15: Who is Mark Webber’s manager?For much of his racing career Mark’s future wife Ann Neal was also his manager, but for professional and commercial reasons they chose to keep their personal relationship secret during that time.16: Has Mark Webber been in any movies?None that we’re aware of. And hopefully he’s not in any that he’s not aware of either.17: Has Mark Webber written any books?In 2015 he released his autobiography titled Aussie Grit, which tells the compelling story of his journey from Queanbeyan to the high-speed world of Formula One racing.18. Is Mark Webber on social media?Yes. He has his own website plus Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts.

When it comes to suspension, both the front and rear systems are equally important, unless you enjoy the prospect of your car dragging its rump like a carpet-ruining dog or burying its nose like a tru

There’s a sprinkling of genuinely exciting metal that will be hitting our shores over the next 12 months.

The badge on the nose may be unique but your car's chassis can be quite common.

The key to successful investment is to find a car that is sufficiently unusual, rare or notable that it will, in time, return you a profit should you sell it.