Auto Salon Aussie Car of the Month

Though most people love the feeling of driving a new car, the process of new car buying is nothing short of a huge hassle. Between the strained interactions with sales staff and the difficulty in finding the financing that you need, many put off getting the car that they need simply to get out of shopping for it. However, there are some steps that you can take before you even set foot on a new automobile lot to help make the process of purchasing your next car run more smoothly.

Before you start shopping, look over your finances to set a budget. When shopping for cars, nothing will have a bigger impact on the options that are available to you than what you can afford to put down and pay each month. There are many online credit calculators available that will help you calculate the amount that you will be eligible to borrow based on where you will set your monthly payments. In order to get an accurate estimate, it will be necessary to enter your credit score, which can be obtained for free. If you do not yet know your score, this is as good a time as any to find out what it is.

After you have decided on your budget for new car buying, you can begin to think about specific models that are most suited to your lifestyle. Though it may sound dry, it may be helpful to write a list of how you will use this new vehicle, both in the immediate future and over the next few years.

If you often haul furniture and other large items, a pickup truck may be the best choice. Those who are planning on adding new members to their family may want to allow room for additional seating. With this list, you can begin to pick and choose the models that are most in line with what you want, which will eliminate the risk of making a poorly thought out impulse buy.

Reading reviews of new cars from reputable sources is a vital part of shopping for an automobile. Here, you will find information on gas mileage, safety ratings and other information that will be important as soon as you take your purchase off the lot. Seek out a few different reviews for each model that you are considering to ensure that you are getting the most complete picture possible of how the vehicle will perform.

Though it may seem like a lot of work in preparation for new car buying, this preliminary research is a big part of making sure that you will be satisfied with the car you select in the long term. By knowing what you want before you get into the lot, you will be less likely to have your mind changed by a sales person and spend more than you intended.

Auto Salon Aussie Car of the Month

J's Racing go to serious lengths on this 235kW naturally aspirated S2000!

Right from the moment you laid eyes on it, this AP1 had you, didn't it? Go on, even you turbo-junkie, died-in-the-wool brand whores will have to admit that this has to be one of the meanest, angriest S2000 Hondas you've seen, and also one of the best. This S2000 is built to circuit specifications, with thorough lightening of the chassis and body, along with a million adjustable suspension components and an engine that revs like a jet turbine.

To be able to lap Tsukuba in under the one-minute barrier, the line between all-out motor sport engineering and traditional street tuner modifications blurs. Every single piece of the motor's systems has to be scrutinised to check for inefficiencies, wasted power, less-than-perfect balance and possible weaknesses, because while they're all very minor on their own (perhaps contributing maybe one percent, if that), when you go right through a vehicle with a race engineer's eye you'll find quite a few of these issues and suddenly you've got a huge gain on your hands.

A couple of numbers concerning the highly worked F22C engine stand out on the info sheet the Japanese tuning legends provided us: 12.9:1 and 235. That is the sky high compression ratio and amazing amount of kilowatts this naturally aspirated 2.2-litre car puts out, which is about as far removed from your average street-driven AP1 as Jupiter is from Blacktown, and what an F22C it is!

One of J's Racing's own crate motors – which cashed up punters can buy for an eye-watering 798,000 Yen, plus shipping! – it is a finely balanced, high-revving, quad-throttle masterpiece that encapsulates all that is great and good about manic track-prepped Honda four-cylinders. In short, this thing is the alpha male of S2000 engines and you can't help but realise that the second you clap your peepers on it.

The custom intake and quad throttles feed obscene amounts of air into the completely rebuilt in-line four-cylinder, which has benefited from judicious reworking of Honda's already excellent engineering to provide a fantastically response powerplant that can withstand the brutal forces dished out from regular track work. The sump is now a J's Racing design that stops engine-destroying surging, while there are fluid coolers not just for the motor, but the gearbox and diff as well, all to ensure that they don't overheat and damage anything. Then there are the Mugen heavy duty engine mounts, Samco radiator hoses (that resist blowing off) and an Aussie MoTeC M400 ECU, which will keep a very strict electronic eye over proceedings.

Everything has been carefully tinkered with, as J's Racing went about changing and honing only what they needed to, though they saw fit to develop a new exhaust manifold and featherweight titanium exhaust system for the two-door flier. But, it's not just about power, with the efficient delivery of each of the 235kW the car puts down of utmost importance.

To this end, J's Racing had Exedy build them a custom-specification Hyper Single clutch, while the boys in the back room changed the final drive ratio to a shorter, more accelerative 4.4:1. They also packed in one of their own 1.5-way limited-slip centres for increased traction and a set of hardened gearbox and differential mounts to erase the slop of the standard rubber units and assist power delivery. It was those excessive tolerances that provided the impetus for a lot of the suspension work that went on under the sexy bodywork.

After having the shell spot-welded for strength and a thorough roll cage welded in, a set of J's Racing's own CRUX coilovers were fitted, shod with pillowball upper mounts for a solid mating face, as the noise and harshness damping effects of the stock rubber pieces were not required on this track-only brute. J's also fitted a 20mm roll centre adjuster to let them get their geometry bang on perfect, along with a set of pillow-mount tie rods to eliminate the S2000's cursed bump-steer (where the toe angle changes as the suspension moves up and down, slowing the car in the corner and making it unstable).

Further limitations were eradicated with the removal of the OEM suspension arms, which were replaced by J's Racing's own SPL rear pillow-mount arms, along with the J's Racing sub-frame reinforcement kit in both the front and rear ends, which reduces twisting and takes the last ounce of slack in the OEM road set-up and drop-kicks it out of the park. Make no mistake: this S2k is stiffer than one of the Sydney Harbour Bridge's support girders.