As some of you may have gathered from my recent 22B thread, we've been vacationing in Cyprus for the last couple of weeks. It's an interesting place from an automotive standpoint, as they use RHD drive cars. As such, you get a serious munging of RHD European cars and true JDM imports brought in directly from Japan. There are lots of Mercedes, BMW, Audi, VW, Citroen, Renault, Peugeot, and a few freaky machines too that I still haven't been able to place. There were also a lot more Smart cars than I expected, including a couple of the coupes. The place is also crawling with scooters. First up, stuff from the local Subaru dealership... This is the 22B that belongs to one of the sales guys in the store. He is also apparently a rally driver, but we didn't have much of a chance to chat about that. I did get to sit in this car, and poke around it a bit. It is incredibly clean, and he claims that it has never been driven in the wet. I don't doubt him. This is a pig-nosed Spec-C, just sitting there, in stock, on the showroom floor, waiting for a buyer. This is a brand new JDM STi. It looks fan-****ing-tastic in this colour. The photos don't do the sparkly goodness of the paint job any justice whatsoever :yumyum: And here we have what seemed to be a v6 STi sitting in the back lot. I'm pretty certain it *is* a v6 STi, however it is definitely sitting wounded. Apparently, it was brought in for some work over a year ago, and then the owner just disappeared. It's been sitting there unclaimed ever since. And, according to Cypriot law, the dealership can't just sell it. After poking around it, I suspect it was involved in a rear end collision and repaired unsympathetically; the spoiler has a high rise brake light, even though it should be at the bottom, the rear brakes were single pot ones even though it had 4pots up front, and I thought the JDM tail lights didn't have any amber in them. The blue pig-nosed one next to it is a 1.6TS (yep, a 1.6L engine) and a bugeye WRX is sitting next to that. While wandering around the town, I spotted a peanut eye 1.6TS with a WRX spoiler and an STi scoop. Now that's serious delusions of grandeur. And now, to the streets...
Although v5 and v6 STi's are quite rare on the island, it is pretty well stocked with v3-v4 vintage machines. However, these people have seriously embraced their inner ricer... Front and rear of the same car. I suspect this one is actually a WRX, judging by the grey trimmed seats. I'm a bit confused by the mix of v5/v6 grill and v3/v4 bumper, so I can't really work out what year it would be from. And I am now more convinced than ever that chrome rear tail lights are a bad idea. A really bad idea. I had hoped this one would come out a lot better. It's a peanut eye STi with what looks like a C-West grill. There were also a number of Evos to be found... (note this one is shown in its natural state, and that's a blinged out red Tiburon to the right.) Although I suspect some of them are wannabes... And nothing says class like pop riveting your body kit on before you've painted it to match the rest of your car. And with somewhat lax copyright laws, there's quite a bit of Unofficially Licenced merchandise to be had. But I wonder if they know something I don't, since I saw one place selling hats representing the Mercedes WRC Team. This one's about 1/4 the size of the one above. A few other observations: Petrol comes in three flavours at the pump; 95, 98 and 100 octane. I spotted a Legacy B4 on the street. Very nice. It is apparently required that, if you possess one, you take your loud exhaust equipped car/bike out and run it all night long at max revs. It was interesting to see some of the better done small cars on dealer lots, such as Toyota Vitzes, some of which had such niceties as Volk and Work Emotion rims. The Skyline GTS is not nearly as exciting or attractive as its GT-R cousin. Bye for now, Stuart.
^^^ Haha, awesome. NOT the preferred nomenclature. Great pics BTW. Pretty neat to see those. That P7 is amazing.
Thanks, and you're welcome. I don't have any more car ones that'd interest you guys, but if you want to see a bunch of crumbly old buildings, let me know. By the way, old means anywhere from 1000 to 2200 years old. Stuart.
