Thursday, 14 July 2011 17:34

After much agonising over whether to drive or ship my new KR from Melbourne I took the decision to drive. The advantage was that I could have a personal handover from Craig and Robyn at Mustang Motorsport, check the car and also give my son an opportunity to have a drive. It didn’t take too much to convince him to take three days off work to come. I was of course worried about getting the car wet (it only had 1,700 kms done in sunny LA), stone chips, bugs and wildlife in the outback.

We took the midnight flight from Perth and by sunrise were at Craig’s premises to see the beauty now with the steering wheel on a different side to when I had last driven it in LA. My son saw a red 2011 Shelby which he preferred to my silver and blue... maybe one day.

We left around 9.30am, heading for my uncle’s in Tanunda in the Barossa Valley. Many admirers on the roads gave the thumbs up and others took pictures as they drove past. Of course the showers came, on and off for most of the way, so there was no chance of keeping the car dry. En route we drove the winding roads in the Adelaide hills (Targa style) in the wet and dark which gave a good opportunity to test the roadholding abilities of the car. My uncle, a very experienced and perfectionist mechanic, got his torch and had a good look over the conversion details. He was most impressed with the attention to detail and finish, so that pleased me even more that I had made the right decision to get Mustang Motorsport to do the work.

On day two we left Tanunda at 10am, heading for as far as we could go. We had dinner at Ceduna around 5pm and then headed into darkness of the Nullarbor. There wany torrential showers and road trains, which made passing in the water spray a little tricky at times. Not that passing took very long, even pushing the pedal in sixth gear got the blower into action and whoosh. Thank God the wiper conversion proved to be perfect since it had a huge workout. No live or even dead roos, so I felt that the rains had provided plenty of feed away from the roadsides. Only a dingo, fox and couple of rabbits. Fuel got progressively more expensive and peaked at $2.02 per litre at Nullarbor (98 octane).

Taking turns to drive I never felt tired and thought I could refuel at Mundrabilla around 11pm and continue through the night, but it was closed. I had just enough fuel to get to Madura by setting cruise control to 95kph to conserve what I had left. We even suffered the indignity of a Commodore passing us! Reaching Madura, everything was closed, including the motel! It was too cold to sleep in the car and my son wasn’t too keen on this either, but we managed to use an after hours number to get the motel caretaker to get a room for us. We had to wait until 6.30 to fuel up again.

We saw the WA side of the Nullarbor by day and my son drove the 146km straight. We were stopped at a police road block near Balladonia for a routine drivers licence check and he took the rego number which was still the original Californian plate, so he’ll have fun tracking that! Still more showers until we hit Norseman about 11am for a Brekkie on the go. More admirers were taking pictures and chatting, even though by now the car wasn’t looking as flash as when we took the keys in Melbourne. By Kellerberrin we passed the freight train which we had passed at Port Augusta a day earlier and which would have transported my car, so we just beat it home. We reached our destination at 6.30.

Overall we did 3,500 km and an average of 13.5l/100km (21mpg) - quite reasonable given that we tested the car’s capabilities in the outback, although mostly cruising at a comfortable speed. Since arriving in Perth I have done around 100km and recorded as low as 12 l/100km (24mpg) which is rather staggering, but that’s careful driving. A very comfortable car although bouncy on the rougher roads with the stiff suspension and short wheelbase. But hey, it’s not meant to be a limousine. No bugs and unfortunately a very small stone chip in the windscreen, but otherwise the car is looking in showroom condition again now that it has been detailed including a few hours underneath taking the road spray off. Absolutely no regrets about the experience and opportunity to test the car’s capabilities in a variety of driving conditions. Driving half the boring section at night and in the wet seemed to shorten the journey. I almost feel like doing it again, maybe to get it serviced at Craig’s. It is a true Grand Tourer and worthy of the GT500 KR badge.