hamstrung

@BenB sorry you had a bad pick-up experience. It's a shame the seller didn't work with you on the RWC items. Agree with @lachlan8, RE003s are shit, you'll be glad to get new boots. PS5, PS4S, CSC7, Potenza Sport, Eagle F1 - so many great tyres these days. I'm sure many here can relay their experiences and maybe see if there's a Meg 3 tyre test somewhere? When I picked up my 225 Cup many years ago, it had cheap crappy tyres too. After a month, I figured life was too short and just binned them for some Michelins. Plus, cheap tyres will never wear out as they don't produce any grip!

Depends what you’re willing to pay. For your use case, best tyres are probably PS4S or CSC7. Both very pricey though. Maybe next level down is Potenza Sport. PS5 will be a good all rounder and that is a good price, probably a third of what you would pay for PS4S!

Yes that’s what insurance is for. Otherwise the Mercedes driving t—t as you say will sue you personally for the cost, which is waaaaaay worse

Let’s give OP the benefit of the doubt and assume he didn’t know that before. @Ezra, highly recommend at least getting a third party property damage policy, maybe also with fire and theft. Would be a few hundred bucks, and covers you from the unthinkable.

Yeah I wouldn’t take what you see around as being within the rules. I’ve seen plenty of P platers driving V8 Holdens and Fords, doesn’t make it legal (or insured).

All good points above. My 2c: buy a Clio instead. P-plate friendly. Plus: Lower speeds while inexperienced are a good idea. We all think we're better than we are when we're young (unless you have been carting and racing your whole life, in which case ignore this!) You'll learn better car control. It's easier to get away with poor driving technique in a turbo (e.g. balancing clutch, wrong gear for speed). Having a high-revving N/A engine will make your skills sharper, IMO High-revving N/As are dead. They're not making them anymore. We will all miss them soon enough - especially the sound

We just put Potenza Sports on the i30N, it was 1297 fitted at Bob Jane on the 4 for 3 deal. It was this month so deal should still be active. Potenza Sport is supposed to be a top performer with the only potential concern being wear. For less than $200 over Adrenalines, go for the Sport…

Agree with this - every time I see one, I'm convinced they have high beams on (whether behind or in front of me, and from 100m+ where the vehicle height shouldn't matter)

Not sure if it differs between states, but it’s generally not worth your while to try and compliance additional seats. However many seats are complied is it, and it would be a very expensive exercise getting re-complianced. As @Matt205 says, it’d be easier to fit Ohlins to a 5 seater.

Deleting both the res and muffler would make it obnoxiously loud, IMO. I had a muffler delete and the volume was pretty good, and also then swapped out for a res-delete K-tec hot dog and that was louder still (but sounded great). An exhaust shop could chop the muffler and weld in a bit of pipe for pretty cheap (and you keep the stock tips). Bonus if you keep the res, you also keep the whistle.

Just for a bit of balance, my Lotus has Recaros and they are bloody great, IMO. Very comfortable for long journeys, good back support, and they look good. In terms of lateral support, they've been fine for me but I won't pretend I have ever approached the cornering limits of my car. What I will add, though, is I watched a Henry Catchpole video where he was getting advice from a professional race driver (Le Mans winner?), and one little nugget I took from that is the 'push' instead of 'pull' steering technique, which pushes your shoulders into the seat side supports. That might make the Recaros supportive enough even in track applications... but I'm sure someone else can chime in who has pushed their car much harder than I have.

Reckon if the car's not already built, it won't end up getting the matrix LEDs... manufacturers are un-specifying them due to lack of chips

Then you’ll probably be glad the “end of ICE” thread isn’t about audio too?

Sorry, I missed that - saw the Laguna bit and missed the Megane! I always felt the little one was safe in the back of the 225, with the added bonus my loud K-tec exhaust put her to sleep within 5 minutes every time

If it was me, I’d keep the Clio for fun driving and get a nice-ish “beater” for carting kids and stuff, like a 2010-12 Suzuki Kizashi in manual, which is a bit bigger, heavier and more modern. Then I wouldn’t be scared to park said beater on the street. (Also, a Megane 225 feels like it’s hewn from solid stuff, which is probably an impression more than reality)

It's not worth anything to me as I'm not looking to buy a Meg 3

Mate, he's lying. As others have said, put a time-bound offer on the table for what it's worth to you and be prepared to walk away. If I had a solid offer on the table from a dealer which was acceptable to me, I'd simply take so as NOT to have to deal with ppl... it's a friggin' circus on carsales, for performance cars you get 4x time wasters for every one genuine buyer

Hey, don’t worry about being flamed. Most ppl on here are great and you can just ignore the others I can’t help you with the cars but you can transport interstate for <1k in most cases. CEVA is one of the main carriers, there’s one more but the name escapes me. Just beware that many others are agency services which still use CEVA, so if anything did go wrong there might be accountability issues.

Personally, I wouldn't downgrade on headlights for better in-car audio (but I recognise this is a personal choice). For me, HID or LEDs are non-negotiable in any new-ish car I buy, as otherwise I feel like I can't see s--t driving at night and especially dusk/dawn. But then again, I may be slightly biased against in-car audio as I rarely even use it... engines and exhausts are my music.

^ This is also true of Cup models, TC stays off above the set speed (thought it was 50kph?).

Personal choice, but I won't ever buy a car without HIDs or LEDs ever again (well, maybe I'll make an exception if I can afford an old Ferrari one day or something...). I'll never understand why Renault took them out, considering they were standard in my 2002 Clio and 2006 Megane. You don't have to take it to track. But of course, please don't do anything stupid on public roads! When buying a used performance car, it's usually a good idea to get a feeling for what the seller is like, i.e. whether they are telling porky pies.

I take it it was a DSG? I couldn’t find a manual anywhere…

I'd be worried about what they would do in the event of a claim though :S

Used and demo car prices right now are nuts. I'd love a 280 for a family car, but there's no way I'm paying 90% of the new price for a 3 year old car out of warranty. One consideration might be the type of auto gearbox? People who've never driven a manual might have bad habits like creeping or letting the torque hill-hold - both obviously horrific for dual clutch gearboxes, very expensive repair bill.

Ok first things first - all the examples above unfortunately mean nix to you. You specifically need to know the rules for the state you are exiting and entering SA rego because all of those permutations will differ in some way, e.g. understanding NSW to VIC or VIC to QLD or QLD to SA will not help you at all for VIC to SA. For this, I recommend you consult the relevant state's website as well as your local SA road authority, and be prepared to try and work out what they are saying. Then, you will find it's productive to call one or both authorities to clarify any questions you have - I called Vicroads when transporting a car from NSW, and was pleasantly surprised how helpful they were in terms of advising how to go about it. Some people will tell you that you can retain rego in the original state (forever), but most road authorities prohibit this, and therefore for insurance reasons I wouldn't personally do it. With most combinations there seems to be a grace period, where you can get your local RWC and book a rego appointment before the interstate rego is deemed to no longer be valid (e.g. could be three months) - but again, you have to check for the specific state combo. The grey area is often whether you need to get an "unregistered permit" whilst you go through the process, and frankly for $50 or whatever it is, I just got one for peace of mind (even though it was probably unnecessary). There would be nothing worse than being in a bingle only to find out insurance won't pay because they find that grey area and deem your car unregistered! But, to be fair, there's nothing stopping you from getting your current car and driving all over Australia, so in theory it shouldn't matter (well, apart from sudden COVID border closures, I suppose!). It's a pain, I know. I was looking for a couple of rare cars when I was in the market, so I had to look nationally as well - and each time I got to a stage where I was considering a car, I had to research the relevant rules to see how it would best work. Oh, and generally speaking, stamp duty should only be required in the state where the transfer technically took place, i.e. either you are transferring rego in the state where the car currently resides and pay stamp duty there (then transfer the interstate rego to your local state) or you get the car home, get RWC and register it as a new rego in your home state (and where it was from the rego is then cancelled, refund to be negotiated to either you or the vendor as part of the sale price, presumably).