It’s been said that the victors write history. It’s also the case that history tends to be written in the native language of the country – or company. Perhaps it’s for those reasons that good histories of the major Japanese car makers seem so absent – or, when they do appear, are rather lame.

Honda Motor – the Men, the Management, the Machines was written by Tetsuo Sakiya in 1982. When I came across it, the age of the book didn’t worry me – surely all the foundations of the company were in place by then – so it was a read I was looking forward to.

However, the promise isn’t fulfilled. Basically, it’s because the author feels the necessity to wander off into prolonged diversions on Japanese history, culture, labour practices, emancipation of women, trading companies, the role of government – and God knows what else.

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This is the last blog post for this year, and this week’s edition of AutoSpeed is the last until January 6.

It’s been an interesting year, not least because in response to reader requests, we’ve been again testing more new cars.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – I think that when testing cars, nearly all journalists are way too soft in their criticisms. I mean, to make just a simple point – by definition, half of all new cars should be rated below average and half should be above average.

But read most car tests and you’ll find that nearly all cars are said to be way above average!

I also think that journalists – and especially enthusiasts’ magazines and TV shows – need to in part be blamed for the absurd direction that some manufacturers have taken with their cars.

The car that this year amazed me the most was the Ford FG Falcon.

The model that I would think sells the best – the XR6 – was incredibly off the pace in the things that matter to most purchasers. All I can say is: what on earth was Ford thinking when they set the priorities?

I wrote about this when the car was first released – see The New Falcon – Mostly Irrelevant and the ironic The Ideal Car for the Times - but the car’s reality was even worse than I’d guessed.

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Day #1, Urban

Power steering heavy, good (apparently variable) ratio, good feel

Suspension gives firmly damped ride

NVH very good

Performance at full throttle nothing special – air con switches off at merest hint of lots of throttle and seems to stay off for a long time (relatively speaking eg 5 secs)

Cabin feels surprisingly enclosing, not spacious – cf colours of trims, width at driver’s knee level poor, distance between back seat and rear of centre console poor

Speedo and tacho have stupidly fussy markings + silly ‘XR6’ colouring

Central instrument panel LCD is model of clarity – good range of selectable options, including digital speedo

I-phone connectivity (including charging) but no on-LCD display of tracks, etc

Around town fuel consumption with air con on – 12.5 – 13.5 litres/100km – this is progress?

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In August last year I wrote:

http://blog.autospeed.com/2007/08/14/local-car-makers-accelerating-towards-their-demise/

Read it again.

Less than a year later:

-  Mitsubishi manufacturing in Australia has gone broke

- Holden has said that within 2 years it will release diesel, hybrid and possibly four cylinder turbo versions of the Commodore. The company may also build smaller cars in Australia.

- Ford has released a ‘going on as the same’ FG Falcon, and then - oops, gosh, the world has changed! - announced a diesel engine version within 2 years.

- Toyota has said that they’re eager to build a Camry hybrid in Australia.

I wrote then :

The local manufacturers – especially Holden and Ford – need to show with locally developed product in the showroom that they can produce cars that appeal to more than Ford/Holden performance car enthusiasts, that they not only understand but also actively embrace the significant social change that is now occurring. Otherwise the Australian car will continue down the road to anachronistic irrelevance – it’s already on that path and accelerating as fast as its powerful and thirsty engine can take it….

At last, at last, Holden and Ford are stirring. Hopefully it won’t be too late.

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The other day, on learning that I am an automotive journalist, someone asked me what is my favourite make of car.

I must admit the question rather stumped me. It did so for two reasons: firstly, I can’t see how any impartial automotive journalist could ever admit to having a favourite amongst car brands, and secondly, I am not even sure how anyone can logically have a favourite car maker.

I’ve owned cars made by Alfa Romeo, Audi, Austin, BMW, Daihatsu, Holden, Honda, Rover, Saab, Subaru, Toyota – and many others. I’ve driven cars ranging from Rolls Royce to Porsche to Ferrari. I’ve also driven many Mazdas, Mitsubishis, Volkswagens – and so on.

And really, despite brands developing their images based on specific advertised criteria, I have to say that the idea that certain brands have certain attributes is largely a myth.

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Back when the Holden VE Commodore was released, I was very disappointed that styling clearly dominated engineering in a way that I thought reflected the worst excesses of the past.

I wrote:

Quoted in Go-Auto E-News, designer Mike Simcoe had this to say about the exterior:

“It’s good, confident design. It’s well proportioned and it pushes quality to a level that we’ve never seen before. The interior package for VT was king of that in the market here – and this car continues that. The volume efficiency of the package – that’s the exterior volume to interior size – is just as aggressive as VT was. We made a big song and dance back then about that. And this car is the same.

“The track is a little bit wider with this new architecture, so from the ground up we’ve been able to put the wheels wider on the car.

“It’s an international design. You can’t say ‘European’ any more, because there’s no ‘European design’, or ‘Japanese design’ – it’s a truly international design in its form language. It’s genuinely a rear-wheel drive proportioned car which is something we hadn’t been able to push as hard in the past. And it’s much more formal. The form language that’s on the car is internal Holden. We’ve been trying to do something like this seriously for a long time.”

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The tipping point came when Al Gore released his new documentary: I Was Wrong. Completely repudiating An Inconvenient Truth, Gore showed in minute detail how flawed his previous views were.

The world was not actually warming, he noted,  instead it was cooling – and cooling in a way that was very likely to result in greater crop yields, more favourable rainfall patterns and political stability.

And the cause? From his documentary we learned for the first time that CO2 was proving in fact to be hugely beneficial. The greater CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere were counteracting the altered reflectivity of Earth’s surface caused by widespread urban development and farming practices.

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Yesterday Ford took the wraps off the new FG Falcon.

New Australian developed and built cars come along only very rarely; Ford took the unusual step of releasing the car on a Sunday so that it could gain precious free airtime on the Sunday night TV news and in the Monday papers.

Away from my home base, I watched the Sunday night Channel Nine TV news in Adelaide with interest. How breathlessly and non-critically would they report the release of the new car?

The report was relatively short but it was what followed that had me gobsmacked.

Immediately after the report on the Falcon finished, the Nine news moved straight to a segment on the booming sales of the hybrid Toyota Prius, and the way in which some individuals are now converting their cars to battery electric power. The station interviewed several Sydney electric car enthusiasts and presented a glowing report on the cars. Phrases like ‘fuel economy’, ‘greenhouse gas emissions’ ‘oil consumption’ and ‘cost to run’ sprinkled the report.

The juxtaposition couldn’t have been a bigger slap in the face for Ford: even the dimmest viewer could not have missed the implicit comparison.

Today, on the Monday after the Falcon’s release, my emailed News.com.au update doesn’t have a single mention of the new Falcon.

Imagine how different the news reports would have been if Ford had released a car with breakthrough fuel economy and lower greenhouse gas emissions. A turbo diesel engine, or a downsized six cylinder turbocharged to gain efficiency.

Instead we have launch control – and even more power, torque and weight. Oh yes, and a fuel consumption improvement that is nominal to say the least.

It’s very hard to believe that the Falcon will not go the way of the Mitsubishi 380 – and for much the same reasons. High quality engineering directed in completely the wrong direction, aiming at a target that started to move a decade ago and has now gone…

(See also this blog)

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Right now – and probably for the next few years – there’s a helluva bargain to be had.

I’ve bought one to put on the shelf and I highly recommend that anyone else into useable road performance does so too. And what should you buy? At least one of all those BA and BF Ford Falcon XR6 intercoolers that are being flogged-off on Australian eBay, commonly priced from about fifty bucks.

Yes, from fifty bucks.

Now maybe the people who want far in excess of the Falcon’s standard 240kW have an urgent need to replace these Garret-cored, bar-and-plate intercoolers with something far better, but for people who are happy to drive a car with performance not limited by wheelspin, these intercoolers look perfect. Being an all-welded design, they’d also be dead-easy to jacket with aluminium sheet, making them water/air intercooler cores. At a core size of 370 x 175 x 60mm, they’re relatively compact but have well-shaped alloy end tanks. For people wondering overall size, they’re 620 x 270 X 60 cm to the extremities. Inlet/outlet tube size is 58mm (hose ID).

Even if you consider the time and labour to fold up new end tanks from sheet aluminium and pay someone to TIG them to the original core, you’re still talking an excellent intercooler for the price.

The one I bought came with all its hoses and clamps – also very useful when you’re plumbing any intercooler into place.

Without having done any flow or temperature testing, but looking at the core and assessing the original application, I’d be happy running at least 200kW through them – more, eg 250kW – with a good water spray.

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