- Wed Apr 16, 2008 6:45 am
#51019
If ur looking for pics im slowly adding them in the "SA connection" sedan readers ride section(cant remember what y'all call that section).
About the whole import thing, its, um, how to say it, K@K(cr@p)!. ITO jap cars. IRT the US its a case of someone is always worse off. Y'all complain about getting the US versions of the jap cars, we just dont get the sports models and the 'consumer' models are always different and u can never get any specs, nissans sick joke of a sports model is the sentra(pulsar sedan) Sti with a SR20DE with 140hp but weve got the 350Z. In SA we make a lot of cars like, we have VW, BMW, Hummer ect. plants here but they are mainly for export. Eg. the H3's get made here but sell for R400000($50000) and the WRX STi costs the same which is insane. The one BMW plant puts out approx. 300000 3series alone(for a developing country with 23% of the population of the US). Were a very european market. I dont mean any disrespect but the American cars are crap. They are inefficient and build quality is shocking(when compared to jap, euro cars) the only cars that are worse are the TATA's and chinese cars.
What u find is a lot of turbo M3's, 325is, Golf's, Opel's ect.
Our import scene are the Aston Martin's(2nd biggest market outside ENG), Porsche's(the most common performance cars), Ferrari, Lamborgini(many galardo's running around) and there's a company that makes everything for Noble(UK) and Rossion(US)(same thing) except the enjin.
For us the import scene is all the cars that we can get from the poorer/smaller bordering countries like Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Botswana, Namibia, Swaziland and Lesotho, where they import 2nd hand JDM cars. In the past u just needed an address there and could drive it in SA but customs has been cracking down on this and crushing these "illegal" cars. But u can legaly import RHD cars if imigrating(or returning to) to SA.
To be honda specific in terms of sports cars we got the EF style CRX with 97kw(132hp), then had to wait for the EK civic hatch with the 118kw(160hp) enjin. Then the civics went stale again and we got the Type-R of the current civic hatch with 147kw(200hp). The K-enjined accord type-s came with the 2.4 147kw(200hp) enjin. the S2000 came out with the F20C enjin with 178kw(242hp). Thats it, if u want to see an ITR, civic Type-R NSX, Si/R of any sort u'll have to go next door.
Honda driver by day, Aikido student by nighT
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