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For grandpas in the 90s, a mid-sized Japanese sedan seemed like a sensible choice. Their hothead days were behind them. Good safety ratings were firmly in their sights. These cars had enough room to take the grandkids around and weren’t too flashy or heavy on the fuel. What some of the less spec-conscious among these aging men didn’t realise is they ended up with cars that were faster than the Commodores and Falcons they sensibly walked past in the car yard and packed considerably more power than their twilight years required.
While we may hope that some of these grandpas secretly (re)discovered a taste for some mild thrill-seeking, more likely these sleeping beasts had to wait until they became hand-me-downs to be unleashed.
The quintessential grandpa mobile, the Mitsubishi Magna. Safe, cheap, reliable and about as non-threatening as automotive design gets. But under this humble exterior is a surprising amount of go. Straight off the factory floor it did 0–100 km/h faster than the Commodore of its day and was only a few points behind on peak power.
Just like the Commodore, the Magna was designed and built on home soil, at the Tonsley Park plant, in South Australia, from ‘85 to ‘05. Unlike the Commodore, the front-wheel drive made burnouts a little harder and less pretty (as hand-me-down recipients might have discovered). But plenty of low-end torque still meant the Magna was always up for some harmless fun around town and was more than capable on the highway.
If grandpa is still going, his Magna may well be too – these cars are survivors and can still be spotted in the wild 30 years on.
For the grandpa that thought his decades of hard work had earned him something a little more special than a Magna, the Nissan Maxima might have appealed. Silky smooth power delivery got it to 100km/h in under 9 seconds. Solid build quality catered to a quiet and comfortable ride, and the six-speaker Clarion sound system would have done justice to the classics.
If grandpa had stumbled across the rare Maxima import with a VQ30DE engine and a manual transmission, he would have had 142 kW (190 hp) of power at his fingertips and been able to do 0–100km/h in 6.6 seconds. The Falcons and Commodores would have been distant specs in his rearview mirror, theoretically speaking. The VQ30DE equipped Maxima was the fastest Japanese sedan of its day. And all for
the same displacement of just 3.0L!
The runt of the litter. For what the Subaru Liberty lacked in comparative power and acceleration, it made up for in steez – and grandpa knew it, consciously or not. These Libertys had the bones of a rally car – the RS Turbos (sold in Aus ‘91–‘94) packed 147 kW and fathered the WRX. All Libertys were full-time AWD, way ahead of their time. Combined with the low centre of gravity afforded by Subaru’s signature horizontally opposed boxer engines, the Liberty took corners with class, giving grandpa peace of mind in the wet or on the gravel.
For grandpas in the 90s, a mid-sized Japanese sedan seemed like a sensible choice. Their hothead days were behind them. Good safety ratings were firmly in their sights. These cars had enough room to take the grandkids around and weren’t too flashy or heavy on the fuel. What some of the less spec-conscious among these aging men didn’t realise is they ended up with cars that were faster than the Commodores and Falcons they sensibly walked past in the car yard and packed considerably more power than their twilight years required.
While we may hope that some of these grandpas secretly (re)discovered a taste for some mild thrill-seeking, more likely these sleeping beasts had to wait until they became hand-me-downs to be unleashed.
The quintessential grandpa mobile, the Mitsubishi Magna. Safe, cheap, reliable and about as non-threatening as automotive design gets. But under this humble exterior is a surprising amount of go. Straight off the factory floor it did 0–100 km/h faster than the Commodore of its day and was only a few points behind on peak power.
Just like the Commodore, the Magna was designed and built on home soil, at the Tonsley Park plant, in South Australia, from ‘85 to ‘05. Unlike the Commodore, the front-wheel drive made burnouts a little harder and less pretty (as hand-me-down recipients might have discovered). But plenty of low-end torque still meant the Magna was always up for some harmless fun around town and was more than capable on the highway.
If grandpa is still going, his Magna may well be too – these cars are survivors and can still be spotted in the wild 30 years on.
For the grandpa that thought his decades of hard work had earned him something a little more special than a Magna, the Nissan Maxima might have appealed. Silky smooth power delivery got it to 100km/h in under 9 seconds. Solid build quality catered to a quiet and comfortable ride, and the six-speaker Clarion sound system would have done justice to the classics.
If grandpa had stumbled across the rare Maxima import with a VQ30DE engine and a manual transmission, he would have had 142 kW (190 hp) of power at his fingertips and been able to do 0–100km/h in 6.6 seconds. The Falcons and Commodores would have been distant specs in his rearview mirror, theoretically speaking. The VQ30DE equipped Maxima was the fastest Japanese sedan of its day. And all for
the same displacement of just 3.0L!
The runt of the litter. For what the Subaru Liberty lacked in comparative power and acceleration, it made up for in steez – and grandpa knew it, consciously or not. These Libertys had the bones of a rally car – the RS Turbos (sold in Aus ‘91–‘94) packed 147 kW and fathered the WRX. All Libertys were full-time AWD, way ahead of their time. Combined with the low centre of gravity afforded by Subaru’s signature horizontally opposed boxer engines, the Liberty took corners with class, giving grandpa peace of mind in the wet or on the gravel.
Franz Kafka, the famous Czech writer, never married but was engaged numerous times. He would write to his first fiancee, Felice, 2, 3 or 4 letters daily when he was working in Prague and she was living in Berlin. By Kafka’s own reckoning, he wrote to her perhaps 500 letters.
Humans have five traditional senses: sight, sound, smell, touch and taste. We go about the world using these senses to guide us, and we are heavily reliant on vision as our primary and dominant sense.
Have you ever heard of a national dish? No doubt you’re aware of a national anthem or a national flag, but what is a national dish?
While you may have heard of Christmas and Hanukkah, did you know that there’s also an important Buddhist celebration and a Wiccan festival in the same month?