Articles by Stephen Corby

The law, famously, is an ass, but when it comes to speed cameras, it's a differently shaped ass - although still a stinky one - depending on which State you live in.

Who is the Stig? It is, or certainly was, one of the great mysteries of our time.What we know for sure is that he was, and is, the unidentified, mysterious and enigmatic “tame racing driver” on the global televisual juggernaut that was, and still kind of is, Top Gear, and it was his job to set the hot lap times by which all of the world’s greatest cars were compared on the Top Gear leaderboard. A simple answer to the question would be Ben Collins, but that’s only one answer, because he was also Perry McCarthy, and Michael Schumacher, and Big Stig and Black Stig, among others. There is currently another white-suited Stig whose identity remains a secret.And then there are the things we know about him that make Stig truly mysterious and amusing, like the “fact" that he never blinks, sleeps upside down, and is scared of bells, ducks and boy Scouts. Some also say that he has two sets of knees, webbed buttocks, a digital face and that if you tune your FM radio to 88.4 you can hear his thoughts.All we really know, for sure, is that he's called the Stig.Not since the boys from Kiss finally took off their make-up to reveal their hard-rocked faces, back in 1983, had the planet been so caught up in the race to find out someone’s true identity. So when Ben Collins - a man no one had ever heard of, despite all the speculation about the secret racing driver being someone famous - outed himself as the Stig, publishing a book called The Man in the White Suit in 2010, it was a huge story.The myth and mystique of the Stig had been built up over many years, and magnified by the success of the Top Gear TV show, hosted most famously by Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond, which was, for several years, the most-watched non-fiction television program… in the world (as Clarkson would bray it).The Stig's identity had been exposed once before, in the form of a newspaper scoop, back in 2003, when Top Gear was only really a big deal in the UK, rather than worldwide.Clarkson and the his good friend Andy Wilman, the producer and genius behind the show, came up with the idea for the Stig when they launched the version of Top Gear we know today - featuring a racetrack, a live studio audience and plenty of crazy races and stunts - in 2002. The two of them wanted a professional racing driver to set fast, and comparable, times on the Top Gear test track, in a segment known as Power Laps, but they struggled to find one who was any good at speaking on camera, so they decided to make him a mute in a suit instead. The name “Stig comes from the private school both attended, where any new boy arriving was always called “Stig”. The idea that Stig was some kind of superhuman being was laid down the very first time Clarkson introduced him as an “it” - “nobody knows its name, and we don't wanna know, because it's a racing driver”.The first Stig, who wore a black suit, was Perry McCarthy, a not particularly famous F1 driver, who went to huge amounts of trouble to maintain his anonymity, wearing his helmet and suit at all times and even putting on fake accents when required to speak.The Stig’s other job on the show was to teach celebrities to drive around the Top Gear track at high speed, for another segment called Star in a Reasonably Priced Car, in which celebrities would set a lap time and be compared with other famous people for their driving skills.Doing this while maintaining his anonymity was yet another challenge for McCarthy, until his identity was revealed by a Sunday newspaper article in January 2003. The Black Stig was then killed off by the show in the first episode of Series 3, after driving off the deck of an aircraft carrier into the ocean at high speed. There has always been some debate over whether he was sacked or resigned.The Stig who would go on to genuine global fame was known simply as white Stig and was unveiled in 2003 and, incredibly, his identity remained a tightly held secret for seven years.During that time his role expanded beyond just doing Power Laps and training celebrities to being more of a comic foil and taking part in some of the show’s iconic races and even its Winter Olympics, in which Stig jumped a snowmobile off a ski jump in Norway.While the show’s hosts always talked up the Stig’s super-human driving abilities, the world speculated wildly about who he might actually be. Suggestions included F1 drivers Damon Hill and Michael Schumacher, musician Jay Kay and even US president Barack Obama (a rumour spread by the show itself).The question “Who is the Stig” is sometimes said to be one of the most asked questions on the internet, and T-shirts bearing the words “I am the Stig”, have made the BBC untold millions in merchandise sales.On one occasion, in 2009, the show allowed the Stig to remove his helmet and reveal himself as none other than Michael Schumacher. This was, of course, an elaborate ruse.When Ben Collins decided to write a book outing himself as the Stig (partly because he felt he wasn’t being paid enough and wanted to cash in), a legal battle erupted with the BBC, which makes the show and sells it worldwide, attempting to stop publication of the book, which they said breached his contractual obligations.After the court case, Collins was sacked, the show’s presenters and producers, and many fans around the world, were very angry at him for ruining all the fun and a search immediately began for a new white Stig. This new Stig was found in a manger in Bethlehem during the show’s Middle East special in 2010, it was a baby Stig but it soon grew to full size, and speed, and remains the official Stig on Top Gear to this day, even surviving his show’s most famous co-hosts, Clarkson, Hammond and May, who have all moved on to a new show of their own, The Grand Tour. Top Gear lives on without them, and with the Stig.In case you were wondering, the short-lived Australian Top Gear show’s Stig was also unmasked by the media as Cameron McConville, a V8 super car driver and Bathurst winner. 

Before you have children of your own, you kind of imagine that the day you get your driver’s licence is a purely celebratory one. A rite of passage that leads to expanded horizons and a freedom of movement previously unimaginable. And yet, from the parents’ point of view, this is actually a mildly terrifying time. All the statistics tell us that the most endangered and likely to crash drivers on our roads are P-platers (and young men in particular) and the shift from them driving around next to you with L-plates and their best behaviour on to being out there alone is a harrowing one.We all know that teenagers being allowed to drive cars is a recipe for disaster, but that whole rite-of-passage thing means we can’t really justify raising the L-plate age to something sensible, like 25.Teenagers have tricky little attention spans, and in boys, the part of their brains that assesses risk is still not fully functional. Instead, they seek out dumb and dangerous activities, and thus putting a tonne and a half of metal capable of moving through space at high speeds in their hands is, at the very least, foolhardy.There’s also the simple fact that it takes time to become a good driver; experience in different situations and conditions, road craft, wisdom. And this is why choosing one of the safest cars for P platers is such a vital moment for parents, in consultation with their excited teen, of course. So what is the best first car for a teenager in Australia, and are they as affordable as a first car should be? Fortunately, the answer is yes.

Can a Learner driver tow a trailer? As is so often the case in Australia, the answer to this depends on where you live. Generally, the answer is no, and yet there are thousands of kilometres of roads in this country where it is allowed, as long as you display an extra L-plate on the vehicle you’re towing. 

To modern Australian families, the SUV is what a Commodore or a Falcon used to be - the sensible, obvious and most common choice of family vehicle.

Why are so many willing to pay so much for so few obvious benefits? Most of us don't shell out six-figure sums for a car, but plenty of people do, and you have to wonder why.Is it simply because they can, because a car is a highly visible status symbol that can make you feel, and look, wealthier every day? It's exceedingly difficult to drag your giant house down to the golf-club car park after all.Sadly this theory probably holds some water, or some overpriced champagne, but the fact is that expensive cars - not all, but some - really do feel special to drive. Whether they're worth the money Australians have to pay for them is another debate entirely, but something like a Porsche 911 has a kind of engineering purity, a sense of build quality and teutonic tactility, that elevates driving, even in traffic, to a different level of joy.But you can get nearly all of that joy for less, in a $112,090 Cayman, too.Similarly, a BMW M4 feels and sounds special, with muscular steering and spine-whacking acceleration, as you would hope it should for $156,900, but much of that sheer driving pleasure DNA can also be felt in a 435i Coupe, for $108,500, or even a 420i at a comparatively bargain priced $69,500.The extra performance of the M4 is something you'll only rarely appreciate, unless you own a race track, so spending the extra is hard to justify this side of showing off.The good news however, is that much of this seemingly ephemeral and expensive driving joy can be had for far less money, once you convince yourself to be blind to badges.Behold our list of champagne cars for craft-beer money So, you think you can't afford a super car?Sure you might need to sell an organ or two, but the incredible Alfa Romeo 4C - with the looks of a Ferrari, the racing snarl of a Maserati and the all-carbon-fibre construction of a Lamborghini - brings the supercar dream down to an almost attainable level, with its launch price tipped to be around the $80,000 mark.It feels like we've been waiting forever for this car to arrive in Australia, although Alfa says it's definitely almost nearly here, but that's because world demand has been berserk. And building an F1-like carbon-car takes time.How Alfa has managed to make this super-light (just 895kg), super-handling and seriously quick car - 0 to 100km/h arrives in a Porsche-worrying 4.5 seconds - to market at a price less than six figures is some kind of Italian economic miracle. Perhaps they've fiddled the books.Best of all, it looks so good you wouldn't be surprised if it cost a million dollars.Truly super value. A not-so-poor-man's PorscheThe last Volkswagen Golf GTI, the Mk VI, was such a great driver's car that more than one magazine posited the theory that it was the 911 you could actually afford - it is German after all, and VW actually owns Porsche these days so there's a certain sense in it.The new, Mk VII GTI is an even more incredible car, but VW has gone a step further with the Golf R - the fastest Golf in history, and with all-wheel drive and a $51,990 price tag it's one of the greatest performance bargains on the road today.It might not please the people at Porsche to suggest this, but a well-driven Golf R on a twisty bit of road would give a Porsche Cayman owner a horrible, wallet-hurting fright, and a few 911 owners for that matter.It combines prodigious grip with serious rip from its 206kW/380Nm 2.0-litre turbocharged engine. A $112,090 Porsche Cayman has only 202kW and 290Nm and will hit 100km/h in 5.6 seconds, while the Golf R gets there in five flat, which is a huge difference. Even a $228,150 Porsche 911 Carrera 4 only does it in 4.9.This is all the German car any enthusiast needs. Boxer-ing cleverThere are only two car companies in the world willing to tackle the complexities of a boxer engine (in which the cylinders lie flat and punch side to side, instead of up and down) - Porsche and Subaru.Engineers from the riotously rich German company admit they're deeply impressed that the relatively small Japanese concern can manage the engineering task, but the rewards are clearly worthwhile and nowhere more evident than in the legendary Subaru WRX.This incredible car has held the bang-for-your-buck world title belt since its launch in 1995, thanks to its all-wheel-drive setup, sharp chassis and 2.0-litre turbocharged boxer engine which now makes 195kW and 343Nm and will hit 100km/h in 5.4 seconds.Sure, over some of those years it looked like it had been badly beaten up by a designer with a death wish, sporting the equivalent of two black eyes for a while, but the latest version is possibly the best-looking ever.Better yet, the new WRX is just $38,990, making it a full $1000 cheaper than when the original Rex appeared in 1994.Yes, there are quicker cars on the road, but not many, and very few that are more involving. Cheap and ridiculously cheerfulIt's probably physically impossible to drive a Toyota 86/Subaru BRZ without a smile on your face, and not just because you can't believe the price tag.What you need to know straight up is that the Toyobaru - a joint project between Subaru's engineering brilliance (they brought the 2.0-litre boxer engine, but no turbocharger, sadly) and Toyota's global dominance - is not fast. Its 147kW naturally aspirated engine will get you to 100km/h in 7.6 seconds, so you won't see which way a Golf R went. But then it does only cost $29,990.What you get for that price is far more than numbers on a page can express. Its steering has been favourably compared to Porsche's, its rear-wheel-drive and light weight make it a hoot to throw around and there's a kind of purity and simplicity to it that revisits the kind of fun that cars used to be.It's a cheap way to show off the same smile that the guy in the 911 is wearing.

No matter who you are or where you live, the first question anyone who is about to dip their toe into the electrified water of EV ownership asks is always the same; how long does it take charge an electric car? (Followed by, can I have a Tesla please?)The answer is a complicated one, I’m afraid, as it depends on the car and the charging infrastructure, but the short answer is this; not as long you might think, and that figure is dropping all the time. Nor, as most people tend to think, is it likely that you’ll need to charge it every day, but that’s another story.The easiest way to explain it all is to examine those two elements - what kind of car do you own and what kind of charging station will you be using - separately, so you have all the facts at your fingertips. What type of car do you own?As it stands, there are really only a handful of pure-electric cars on sale in Australia at the moment, with products from Tesla, Nissan, BMW, Renault, Jaguar and Hyundai. Though that number will grow, of course, with models due from Audi, Mercedes-Benz, Kia and more - and political pressure building to increase the number of EVs on our roads.Each of those brands quotes different charging times (largely dependent on the size of each car's battery packs).Nissan says charging its Leaf from zero to full can take up to 24 hours using the standard power at your house, but if you invest in a special 7kW home charger the recharge time drops to around 7.5hrs. If you use a rapid charger, you can top up the battery from 20 per cent to 80 per cent in around an hour. But we’ll come back to charger types in a moment. Then there’s Tesla; the brand that made EVs cool measures its charge time on a distance-per-hour scale. So for the Model 3, you’ll get around 48km in range for every hour of charging that your car is plugged in at home. A Tesla Wall Box or an on-the-road Supercharger will significantly reduce that time, of course.Enter Jaguar, with its i-Pace SUV. The British brand (the first of the traditional premium marques to get an EV to marker) claims an 11km per hour recharge rating using home power. The bad news? That roughly equals 43 hours for a full charge, which seems staggeringly impractical. Installing a special home charger (which most owners will) increases that rate to 35km of range per hour.Finally, we’ll look at Hyundai’s just-launched Kona Electric. The brand says from empty to 80 per cent of charge takes nine hours and 35 minutes, using a home wall unit, or 75 minutes using a fast-charging station. Plugged into the mains at home? That’ll be 28 hours for a full charge of the battery pack.How long do the batteries in an electric car last? The sad truth is that they begin to degrade, albeit slowly, from the first time you recharge, but most manufacturers offer an eight-year battery warranty if something should go wrong. What kind of electric car charger do you use?Ah, this is the part that really matters, as the type of charger you use to power you EV can cut time off the road to a fraction of that you’d spend if you only do your top up by drawing mains power.While it’s true that most people think they’ll be charging their vehicle at home, simply plugging it into the mains when they get home from work, that’s actually the slowest way to pump juice into your batteries. The most common alternative is to invest in “wall box” infrastructure at home, be it from the manufacture themselves of via an aftermarket provider like Jet Charge, which increases the rapid flow of power to the car, usually to around 7.5kW.The most well-known solution is Tesla’s Wall Box, which can up the power output to 19.2kW - enough to deliver 71km per hour of charging for the Model 3, 55km for the Model S and 48km for the Model X.But just as with an internal-combustion-engined vehicle, you can still recharge while on the road, and when you do, you don’t want to spend the better part of an entire day glued to a power point. Enter, then, fast charging stations, which are specifically set up to get you on the road as quickly as possible using a 50kW or a 100kW flow of power.Again, the best-known of these are the Tesla Superchargers, which have started being phased in on freeways and in cities on the east coast of Australia, and which recharge you battery pack to 80-per-cent full in around 30 minutes. They were once (unbelievably) free to use, but that was only ever going to last so long. There are other options, of course. Most notably the NRMA, which has begun the roll out of a free-for-members network of 40 fast-charging stations around Australia. Or Chargefox, which is in the process of installing “ultra-fast” charging stations in Australia, promising between 150kW and 350kW of power, which can deliver some 400km of range in 15 minutes. Porsche is also planning to rollout its own chargers around the world, which are, cleverly, called Turbo Chargers.

There’s long been a bit of a stench around diesel, but with the Volkswagen scandal and big cities in Europe now considering banning them, it seems to be a fuel source that’s more on the nose than ever

The NSW state government could charge owners of electric vehicles (EVs) to use its roads, on a per-kilometre basis, to make up for the huge loss in fuel excise it predicts will occur when people start shifting to EV ownership in a big way.

The only bad thing about the government's instant asset tax write off policy on new company cars - which offered a $150,000 tax break to help people buy a new vehicle - was that it was asking people to spend money to save money when, quite possibly, they