Soop Dogg

TBH, 4k won't buy much in the way of muscle these days. The old stuff is ok if you don't mind driving something that needs regular attention (you need to be farily competent at getting 'under the hood') and they drink fuel. Don't get caught in traffic on a hot day in something old either - it'll boil over! Camaros are ok I guess, but they're not even close to quick if you're used to driving a Supra. With the right exhaust they'll sound nice, but don't decat it without knowing what you're doing as it'll throw fault codes all over the place as they have 4 O2 sensors - 2 before the cats and 2 after. (one for each bank) Don't expect too much in the way of handling from anything old either - it'll feel like a feather bed compared to modern stuff. Come to think of it, some modern American cars don't handle too much better either. I might drive a C6 Corvette and rate it as an extremely capable car, but as far as I'm concerned, most other American stuff is kack. The new Mustangs look great and drive ok - I'd be very tempted by one of those or maybe a late-ish Viper, but other than that I'm not a fan of most American cars. The sludge auto boxes and wallowy handling just annoy me after the first 5 minutes. Sorry!

Maybe it's just your average Friday - it means very little. I'm reserving judgement on which teams are doing well until qualifying.

The extra 6bhp is what I was referring to when I said "It puts out slightly more if you go for the optional exhaust with the valves in it" Fortunately, Hertz ticked this option when they placed their order. Ayway, the fastest car in the world is always a rental!

And if that's what the trip computer said, that'll be to a US gallon, so you were really getting about 27.6 miles to an imperial gallon. I average around that on the motorway at about 85mph. 30mpg is possible if you stick to the speed limit. I believe the fuel tank is 68.8 litres, so not that huge. The Hertz car really only has some extra detailing on it - the stripe, badges and wheels. Maybe some interior bits and pieces too. The engine is the normal LS3, 6.2 litre lump. The bhp figure should be 430 with 424lb ft of torque. It puts out slightly more if you go for the optional exhaust with the valves in it to let it breathe better on WOT. (And sound better too! )

Yes, indeed it is. However, the Corvette is the excepotion to that rule. Which is why a C6 Z06 goes round the Top Gear test track in 1min 22.4 secs. That's faster than a Murcielago, Ferrari F430 etc. I'd say they handle fairly well. Here you go....

(Nah - still love a nice Supe!)

Apart from the obvious bit about 250bhp being utter tripe, the main difference is that the Supra uses forced induction. You can't compare this with an N/A and speak as though it's like for like. Look at the difference between the Supra TT output and the Supra N/A output. Notice anything??? Strap a supercharger or a couple of turbos on a Corvette and you're talking around 600bhp at less than 0.5 bar. Anyway, torque is far more important than bhp figures. My C6 Corvette puts out 405 ft/lb at not much off idle straight out of the box. Being N/A, there's no lag and it responds very precisely to how you work the throttle. Handling is excellent (way beyond what my Supra was capable of) and it's at least as rare in the UK as the Supe was when I bought my first one. Then there's the sound it makes.......

bought & brought

Nope. I've gone for a couple of months without doing any printing and never had to use a cleaning utility once. The gadget show did a review on printers recently. They got a stack of printers and rated their quality of photo printing first of all. Then the top ten of those were assessed for how much it cost per page to print. For quality, cost of printing etc. the Canon Pixma IP4600 came in at No2 and the Canon MP630 was No1. Not a bad result for Canon then! Link to part of the episode here: Gadget Show Up until about 18 months ago, I used Epson, but the heads gummed up after a couple of days without use and the cleaning utility used most of the ink and didn't normally clear the blockage in one attempt so it was stupid expensive. The Canon IP4200 that I use now is quite, reliable and decent quality without having to spend loads of money.

A 'Volvo marine engine'? You might want to be a bit more specific mate. That's a bit like asking if a Toyota engine is any good for blah.... You need to say what size/output it is, if it's petrol or diesel etc etc.

I gave up on horses years ago. Too stressful! But I did make £171 during my lunch hour today on the stock market.

Energy! Yes, the share prices are often high, but some companies like Shell are good long term bets. They're down into the 14's (£ that is) today which for them is a bargain. Most energy stock is not much good as a day-trade though. Long term stuff really.

The fall was so fast, I stayed out of it. I might yet average down by buying cheap, but I already have a sh*tload of Aviva shares. This drop was soo steep, it makes me wonder where I'd be if they did an RBS. Could end up with the dividend being more than the share price! I diverted some money into another sector a few weeks back to try and hedge my bets a bit.

I know of someone off here that cleaned tar spots off his SUPRA with a scouring pad.....and then asked if I thought T-Cut would sort it out. Can't say who that was though...

Yep - saw that a few weeks back. But Irish 'Guards'? I think you mean Irish Police. (Garda Síochána)

Local BBC news video Judging by the antics at about 24 secs in, I'd say he's not too bothered....

This made me laugh! Numpty

People don't get rich by hanging on to a company that's losing them cash. If it's not making money, he'll sell it. And as if by magic.....For Sale

What the govt are now talking about is changing laws retrospectively to try to turn around an event that has already happened so that the outcome is what they wanted in the first place. I think that if they succeed with this, it sets a VERY dangerous precedent about which we should all be worried. I don't like the principal of this bloke getting such a huge payout following failure of the bank, so to refer to 'all the idiots on here that think it's acceptable' is perhaps misrepresenting what many are really trying to say. What I do think is that the measures should have been put in place to ensure that a director residing over such a spectacular failure should not be rewarded and that those measures are made clear and unambiguous from the start. The real idiots that I have seen in the last week are those in government who have tried to bully this bloke into giving back the money, using nothing more that threats that they'll do this, that and the other when in fact they may well have no legal ground on which they can compel him to do so. After the way the PM and his cronies have behaved over this, the more egg that ends up on the governments face over this, the louder I'll laugh!

I wonder what the 'Court of Public Opinion' would say about her claiming that her family house in Gloucs. is actually her 2nd home so that she can claim £116K/year for it whilst claiming her main place of residence is at her sisters house in London? I reckon she's worse that Mr Goodwin! (Just my opinion, of course)

I'm afraid I kind of keep to the insurance sector as it tends to track the stock market as a whole very closely. I did buy some mining shares recently, a little Anglo/Russian company called Aricom. I bought at 8p a share, and about 3 months later Hambro made an offer for them and they were suddenly worth 30p a share. I no longer own those shares. I'm also looking at a little company that makes crystaline wafers for solar panels. (PV Crystalox Solar) Currently they're about 85p a share, but do tend to rise to about £1 to £1.05 quite regularly. Long term they're a good bet as in a recession, nobody has the money to think about things like green issues, so the share price falls. Once the recession is over, they'll rise back towards the £2 a share they have been at in the past. Plus they have a number of 5 year deals that they've signed in the past 6 months that ensures they'll have orders at a fixed price on their books until at least 2014. Not massive short term gains to be made, and not one to get too over involved with as they're a small company, but worth starting with maybe £500 and seeing how far you can grow your holding, then bail out when they reach £1.10 or more as they did recently.

I'm afraid I don't really go with the whole 'buy now and hope the price goes up in X years' thing. Eventually things can fall again even in the long term. Look at all those people with ISA's and stocks from years back that are today worth less than when they started investing in them. Look at all those people investing in companies like GM. In Feb 1978, GM stock was worth over $24 a share. Today it's trading at $2.15 - less than 10% of what it was worth 31 years ago. (It peaked in 2000 at over $88 a share) Ijust look at patterns of how far certain stocks are rising and falling around an average price. That way, if I think a stock is relatively high today, I'll sell it and buy it (or another stock) back when it's relatively low. I can choose whether to pocket the difference or to reinvest it. Generally I'll do the latter.

Shame it's spelt 'Mika' though.

RBS tried that. (I'm a shareholder) By the time the letters came out offering us the 'discount', I could've bought them for about 15% cheaper on the open market! Now they're worth less than 1/2 of what I paid. Fortunately, I only invested a very small amount as 'play' money.

I wouldn't touch the banks at the moment, TBH as there's too much uncovered bad debt that hasn't been counted up yet. Securitisation got too complex for it's own good and trying to unpick just what was wrapped up as 'AAA'-rated packages might take years. Insurance companies are very cyclic at the moment and there's a major amount of money to be made if you time your deals right. Take Aviva. On 12th January, if you had 3,000 shares, you could've sold them at £4.35 a share and got about £13k in your pocket. By 23rd January, you could've bought back in at only £2.64 per share. If you decided NOT to take the profit and use all of your £13k to buy back in, you'd have bought 4,924 shares. Then on 9th Feb, you could've sold them for £4.08. This time you'd have put a little under £20,100 in your pocket. Last Tuesday (24th) they were at £2.72 again! Your cash would've bought you 7,385 shares. So, today you'd be sitting with almost 2.5 times the holding you had 6 weeks ago. If you sat on those until they hit at least £4, they'd give up over £29,500. At just £4.10 the'd be worth over £30k. (!!) But, as I say, you'd have to time it just right. You really need to study a stock and see the range in which it is operating. Then decide on your sell and buy prices and stick to them. You might then be working within a 10 to 15% buffer of the highs and lows, but you'll make good money. The whole insurance sector is following an almost identical trend. Prudential swings are even greater than Aviva, Admiral much less. Maybe spread your money across a number of companies if this is the sector you want to invest in. Banks aren't for me at the moment. You could lose all of an investment. Plus Lloyds are probably going to issue more shares which will only serve to devalue the price of each share as the company isn't suddenly going to be worth more.