Ilivfor6

The wheels on my car were about $630 per wheel & tyre, but that was with a good discount. It's the first one in the country and the importer was eager to get it on a car so was willing to deal considerably. When I saw a picture of them I just had to have them. (Involved many hours of negotiation with the wife... and just a little bit of begging too) The g-max on Peekays is roughly $440 per wheel & tyre and that was with a fair discount too.

Here are a couple of images of Peekay's and my latest purchase. (Mine has the silver wheels) Picked it up Saturday after having all new suspension fitted including shockers & springs custom designed for the sportivo running 17inch rims, and a set of 17inch ultra-light racing wheels that weigh only 4.9kg each - an all up saving of about 35-40kg over the standard wheels. The car rides & holds the road like nothing I have driven before, is ultra responsive to changes of direction and sits very flat under acceleration & breaking. All up was pretty expensive but money well worth spending. It has taken my luv for the car to a whole new level (I think the wife should be nervous :D ) Peekay picked his up Friday with 17inch g-max light weight wheels. We then spent Saturday afternoon in the sun painting the calipers red

shaohaok I have some 6.5 megapixel shots very similiar to the above of the meet I can email to you if you want to PM me an email address I can send them to.

There are still stocks of 2004 plated Sportivo's in the country. A close friend who runs a Toyota Dealership has had one on the showroom floor for a little while, but has recently been told this car must be immediately removed from his showroom floor. It is his understanding, and he does personally know many of the heads of Toyota, that Toyota is not saying anything until they have shipped in enough parts to do all sportivo's Australia wide for whatever issues they are addressing with the car. These secret issues (who knows what... But lets just call it 'Sercret Toyota Business') have all been addressed and solved so now apparently we wait until these parts are manufactured, tested and shipped. Then we find out! I am thinking of joining the hunt for Osama Bin Laden as I think it would be easier. By the time we find out from Toyota I will have found Osama's hiding place, captured him, claimed the reward and be driving home in my new Porsche!

Jees danyther with your 'whatctyamecallits' installed and those 'Thingymajigs' & 'Doodawhackas' you have coming your stivo will fly. :P

ADR (Australian Design Rules if I remember right) are a massive bunch of rules, regulations and standards manufacturers must comply with & pass to sell in this country. They range from safety through to noise regulations. It is ADR testing that stops Australia from getting a lot of the really good stuff because it costs a lot of money to go through ADR testing, therefore making the more niche/lower volume stuff financially not viable. Toyota could face very large fines if the situation is not rectified. We could all be facing a recall on our vehicles if this is correct. I have to deal with these rules all day & everyday in a lot of the stuff I design. A royal Pain in the behind.

I would hate to feel how much understeer that little echo must generate. There must be some serious weight added to the front of that car. What a 75% to 25% front to back weight distribtuion. But giving it some gas down the straight would be fun.

I had the chance to enjoy dinner one evening with Bruce & Peekay. He is really trying to build TRD into something much bigger on our little side of the world. I think that really deserves our support! Besides he's a nice guy to chat with, and really does give great service and still very fair pricing.

Hey guys just remember, Your only as old as the women your feeling :D Oops did I say that. Maybe this should be in a topic all of it's own B)

This is for Dogbert and Doolybird (or anyone else who thinks they can compete for the crown of "oldest sportivo driver". I'll be 33 on October 21, can you beat that? 33 in December so you just beat me, but Old man Peekay wins hands down. I don't know how he fits his walking frame in the boot! :P :P :P (Sorry Peekay... But you know we still luv ya. :D )

Hey Guys, Follow the link to look at the new TSport. Besides some cosmetics it gets some serious suspension work and 20mm lowering. This car is going to handle very, very well. Read if for yourself: New TSport details Cheers

But I should say I have run a moded 1.6 vtec, and he was not happy with the way it turned out. Stivo by over 3 car lenghts by 8000rpm in 3rd. :D :D

I would not be wanting to take on a moderately moded Prelude VTIR. It will spank you all the way home. An old friend has one with unichip (with vtec control), CAI and full exhaust including headers, and it absolutely destroys my brothers Typr-R and eats S2000's for dinner. It actually makes the type-r look like it is standing still. Looking at it from the their side if someone came to our forum with a car that is typically badmouthed by most publications, saying he'll eat the stivo for breakfast I can imagine his reception by some of our members would be pretty confrontational and not very civil. Most of the Vtec guys probably only know of the stivo what they have seen in Motor/wheels magazine etc and lets face it those magazines are not that flattering. We just need to cut a little slack to the non-initiated. A case of seeing is believing.

Hey Lucio, She's got a heartbeat hasn't she. Isn't that your only requirement. :P :P :P If not then all those guys here must be telling lies about you!

I was telling Peekay this one a couple weekends back before we saw Van Helsing Had a short sprint that morning and did not just beat the car I literally Killed it. :o I was at a set of lights when a Holden VL Turbo pulled up next to me with 2 young guys and enough base playing to crack the road underneath them. They started reving and creaping just before green so it was on for sure. We both launch, and I start to pull away in lift, change to 2nd hit lift and pull further away. I can hear his car reving it's guts out behind me and then nothing. I look in the mirror and all I can see is a massive wall of solid blue/grey smoke and I mean thick. Anyway I picked up my fish & chips and on the way back there they were on the side of the road with the bonnet up. After lunch I felt like painting a kill sign on my door. :D

I did not see him change the gears on the runs as I was standing on the straight by the armco. The info on the changes I gave was what he told me after the runs. My first reaction when he told me was bullsh*t but then I saw the times on their laptop and thought wholly crap maybe he is right! I have no reason not to believe him anyway. What he showed me in one of the HSV's is what he called flat shifting. He kept his foot flat to the floor on the accelerator and just tapped the clutch and not all the way in either. The trick to the quickest times was to just tap the clutch to the point of allowing the gear to change any further and too much time is lost. In the HSV his tapping of the clutch was lightning quick. I swear it was the speed of a blink. If you ever watch the V8 supercars on tv and they show their footwork on the pedals watch when they change gears, thats how fast it was. And yes this is not good for the car that's why he told me do it a few more times and the clutch would be sludge. But hey I just wanted to see what time a professional driver could do in the stivo. For the timing they used sensors on the track which fed info to their laptops, as well as radar/laser guns for extenal readings of the cars speeds plus sensors that go on the doors, bonnet, bumper and roof that read g's being pulled plus changes in the cars attitude etc. Very interesting stuff as they take all this raw data back to the engineers who use it in computer models etc to help in the ongoing developments of the cars. With some luck next time (I hope their will be) will try and take Peekay with me if he's willing to sign a confidentiality agreement. As for video camera's, not allowed. Only video on site was their's. I will not be putting my car through that again as my clutch doe's not feel as good as it did before that morning. It's only slight but I can notice a difference. To me it feels as though it is slipping just a bit more. :(

The problem was he said for an everyday drive he would take the Astra, as he spends most of his day pushing cars hard so just wants to cruise to and from work, as its fast but easy/relaxing. I got a lot of practice to do on gear changes still. Basically ripped my ankles off a few years back so now I have mostly metal holding what's left of them in place which I find is quite a hinderance to real quick changes as I just cant move my feet fast enough. Chris's changes were lightning quick. I think he bearly lifted off the clutch at all. I was impressed and in awe. :o Certains parts of the body turned hard when I saw my Stivo moving that quick!

No the car is not stock. I have the TRD CAI & TRD Extractors plus 16,000km on the clock so nice and broken in. Only the unichip to go!

Hi guys, I guess this topic will get my ***** whipped by some in this forum as I do not have signed declerations or multiple video evidence, but there are a few in here I believed would be interested. The others I guess can make all the noise they want as who cares! Have been out with HSV doing some photo's for overseas promotions at a test day of some of their upcoming alterations to their cars. This included acceleration/braking tests, handling tests etc. At the end of the shoot we took my stivo onto the straight for a couple acceleration tests. I drove it first. There were 3 0-100 runs I did. 1st run was 7.9 secs 2nd run was 7.4 secs 3rd run was 7.7secs (still not perfect on the gear changes) Chris one of the test drivers hops in does a few laps to learn the shift action and then bangs out the following:- 1st run 7.2 secs 2nd run 7.1 secs (now says he knows what he's doing wrong) 3rd run 6.9 secs (Hops out with a huge grin and said that was a perfect run) I do truly wish I could change gears like that. Lightning quick. The first two runs he was changing at 8200rpm and dropping to about 7100rpm. For the 3rd run changed at approx 7700-7800 and dropped to about 6600rpm where he said the car had more torque. Going past 7800 he found the car would lose its momentum slightly and 6600 is where the torque really started to surge. Although I could certainly smell the clutch now! For the quarter mile I managed in 2 runs: 1st run 15.7 secs 2nd run 15.5 secs Chris again hops in, with me standing by the armco with my heart racing and reals off two very hot times: 1st run 14.8 secs 2nd run 14.7 secs Needless to say the little stivo won quite a few friends their today, although Chris did say that you would not wish to push the car that hard for long as the clutch would be sludge. His view was this was an awesome little car, but very physical to drive as he had to absolutely ring it's neck to get decent figures compared to the astra turbo which he has found to be more relaxed. But in his tests of the astra turbo the times were much the same, he would though take the stivo over the astra for a sunday drive everytime. As far as he was concerned the stivo gave him something the astra did not and that was a grin from ear to ear. It left him wanting to get back in and give it another hiding! That was my very early morning. first time I've seen the sun rise for a little while. Hey I even managed to do the photo stuff as well. That's it. I am now bracing myself for some of you guys to bend me over and start banging away. P.S. the HSV's were doing real low 5's for the 0-100 & easy sub 14's for the quarters. Not allowed to give actual times for them. But WOW they quick!!!

This same topic ran for 12 months on the SA forum with 20 odd Runx owners working themselves up into a frenzy over their cars being underpowered to the claimed 141kw to the point where they actually started to take Toyota on in the media. The result, Toyota engine dynoed the car from the owner making the most noise about his car being the most underpowered according to a his mates chasis dyno (104kw at the wheels). Final result: His engine achieved 143kw at the flywheel. Toyota put his car back together and then began action to forceably shut down that forum. On the dyno Peekay had his unichip tuned on a 99 model WRX puts out 97kw at the wheels Peekays with just the TRD induction did 102kw. Nobody has questioned the power output of WRX's, so judging by that the Stivo looks to be pretty much spot on. Lets not turn into the South Africans, and just enjoy what we have. :D

I am with Peekay 100% on the quickshift!!! I have driven his car on many occasions and I must say it shifts far more precise than mine. Much easier to shift in the high revs than mine and it has never not gone into gear like mine does often in high rpm. After a unichip it is the next item on my list of mods. When it comes to real world application a lot of hypothetical crap goes straight out the window. I spend a lot of my day as a designer designing products and parts and 9 times out of 10 it does not work in the real world as it does on paper! Can it fix a stuffed gearbox NO. Does it improve shift quality compared to standard most definately!

I think Peekay may get a little nervous if you use his name and me having a wet dream in the same post. Don't worry Peekay I state for the record that I do not or never have found you attractive in any way, shape or form But lucio_libre you might be a different story.... Grrrrrrrrrr!

I will never forget the morning I came across it. The morning mists were clearing on Springvale road. The red light camly starring at me, holding me back from unleashing my 141kw on the poor unsuspecting rubber. The WRX next to me creaping forward revs rising. The red light blinks and changes to green allowing us to unleash the fury beneath us. Unexpected it happens... A scream from the far side of the REX pierces the air and a read phantom appears from the noise. A red Sportivo not like mine, for it is not loosing ground on the WRX, for it is but the WRX that is loosing ground to it. Into the distant mists it did dissapear, not to be seen again! Forget this morning I will cannot, for since then talk I have heard. Talk of large money and a project it funded. Of custom made camshafts and lightweight forged high compression internals from those of TODA racing Japan, of full custom exhaust & extractors made specifically for this car, of a full custom Motec installation that still retained the factory computer to control lift and of a heavily moddified & ported intake manifold (said to create a very specific swirl pattern for the mixture entering the cylinders). A figure going to $30 grand it is said! I believe this is what I saw that early morning. It smoked the WRX and the REX was not standard from the factory floor. I still live in hope of seeing it once more, even at times taking the path of Springvale Rd when it is not needed... Hopefully to cross paths once more. Maybe a phatom it was. Hear about it in wispers only, but none have seen it for sure. Maybe just a local myth or legend... but on that one morning the WRX & I did see something, although just a glimmer as it quickly disapeared into that horizon! (Disclaimer: For fear of being labelled not truthful or for exageration without documented proof, or statuatory declarations written in virginal blood the author has chosen to tell of his tale in fable)

Even again. :D I fogot about me! Red Sportivo, Northern Suburbs Melbourne.

Bring it on Danthuyer... Bring it on. Mate this will be fun. In 12 months time the old Ford versus Holden articles from the press will have been replaced by the Qld stivo versus Vic Stivo mayhem that will have gripped the country. I can see the movie trilogy now... "The Fast & the Faster" :D :D Best of luck mate. Cheers PS. The first Stivo to 200kw wins.