Rainy Day Drivers Club

Sydney based. make boring cars fun, slow cars not as slow, and always too broke to follow through with our ideas. hot takes and hyperfixations about awful cars.

[rainydaydriversclub]

My job is installing art in sydney and last Monday I installed a smushed mk2 Honda civic on a plaster wall. I really love my job lmao

[birdsean]

[rainydaydriversclub]

I have unironically fallen in love with the Mercedes C219 CLS chassis. These boats are approaching scrap prices but they have a level of presence that is insane, especially when paired with silly large wheels and zero ground clearance.

I can see these being the next GS300 or whatever big body sedan people are into now. They’re also a respectable 1660kg in their most basic form…

[rainydaydriversclub]

If an OEM decides to build a little Yaris sized hatchback, they should always build a tiny lightweight coupe based on that same platform, like the Toyota paseo to the starlet, the Renault Mégane, or the early Mazda Astina/eunos 30x

Basically we need more bargain bin coupes for 20 year old to turbocharge and under steer into guard rails.

[rainydaydriversclub]

Unappreciated platform:

GC8 Impreza (not wrx)

1200kg kerb weight, AWD, manual transmission, mcpherson struts on each corner, disc brakes etc.

It’s a very solid, lightweight platform that no one really seems to do anything with other than reshelling WRXs.

I propose finding a clean-ish car, removing the running gear, replacing it with a GT86 (or GR86) rwd driveline, ideally with a super short diff ratio.

Play around with suspension, obviously giving it a bit of a playful rear end, but keep it feeling streetable and soft. Put some WRX brakes on it, keep the stock wheels, but maybe get some sticky rubber.

Change out the seats for more contemporary WRX bucket seats, but keep as much of the car stock as possible.

I reckon you could build something like this for around $10k, would just need to get an Impreza shell, and find a crashed gt86.

[rainydaydriversclub]

new blog format is just hot takes:

Emissions regulations based exclusively on engine efficiency are ok but should be more focused on vehicle weight, drag coefficients and overall driveline losses.

The most fuel efficient car in Australia right now is an MG PHEV suv that does 0.7L/100km which is absolutely crazy. It also weighs 1800kg.

Obviously crash safety and batteries add bulk to cars but imagine if that same car weighed 1400kg and had slightly less crash safety and a smaller battery. You could put narrower tyres on it reducing mechanical losses, reduce the cross sectional area for aerodynamics, and also make it less of a crash risk to whoever inevitably gets hit by it.

This discussion is obviously a big one in the grand scheme of automotive design but if we put as much thought into weight saving as we do into driveline optimisation I think we could much safer roads and cars that are better to drive with less pollution. It also saves money on manufacturing/material costs.

Like what if we started setting drag coefficient standards on cars? And we set a max weight of any passenger vehicle to 1500kg?

Honestly you could reduce deaths on the road by working on traffic engineering and mandatory driver education more than building bank vaults on wheels.

[rainydaydriversclub]

New hot take:

Wheels on cars are too big.

The average car (Camry/corolla) should have 15” wheels as standard with 60 profile tyres.

Sporty cars should have a max wheel size of 17”, which includes Supercars (unless they have stupidly large brakes then I will allow it but they’re on thin ice)

Hatchbacks should be rocking 14” wheels.

In fact I will go further and say that cars should be taxed based on the size of their wheels with tyres.

I too like seeing a slammed jzx100 on 19-20” VSKFs and that’s fine, however from factory, building cars with 24” wheels is insanity.

Also OEMs need to bring back silver steelies without hubcaps for passenger cars.

[rainydaydriversclub]

I have recently discovered that the swift 4x4 that was sold in Europe had independent trailing arm rear suspension.

I would like to buy one, swap the driveline with an evo x with a spicy tune and have the ultimate sleeper. Even just roll racing would be nuts but I’m sure it could handle corners like a 2000s wrc car.

[rainydaydriversclub]

Extremely hot tip for any and every vehicle manufacturer: if you are building an SUV, no matter the style, no matter the engine, no matter the price point, you need to build a 2 door short wheelbase version of it.

This will do 2 things - the first is to make the boring SUV much cooler. Ford territory with a Barra engine? Much cooler as a two door. Porsche cayenne? Short wheelbase would be crazy. Hyundai palisade? Cool as shit.

The second is make it technically much more capable off-road and lighter weight. Super dope.

Anyway that’s all.

[rainydaydriversclub]

This Suzuki hatch is for sale near me, supposedly the guy would take $800 for the car which is in reasonably good condition and has my favourite beige interior.

If I bought it, I would most just get it running and registered for the road, then probably source a daewoo matiz and swap as much of the running gear over as I can. Ideally it would get power brakes and an EFI engine.

Next would be sourcing some 10 inch wheels for it. The dream would be a set of AC courreges wheels with beefy tyres. Once those are on, lower the car a little (I still want to drive it) and get the dents sorted and maybe respray it.

Ideally it would be a weekend warrior on historic rego.

[rainydaydriversclub]

I think I’m going to buy a gen2 Honda crv to replace my very very good but very very boring 2018 Yaris.

I’ve been grappling over having boring cars for the last few years as my partner can’t really handle low, hard riding cars and I need both my work van (elgrand) and my commuter to be practical.

I’m think of replacing the Yaris with the CRV and giving myself permission to spend about $3k modernising it (CarPlay, reversing camera, roof racks) and maybe if there’s money left, putting some cool wheels on it or maybe some sway bars or even silly muffler.

I don’t think I’d mess with suspension too much, though if I have the means, I’d want to get fresh oem dampers installed and have comfy ride that can handle some light off-roading for work. Sway bars would mean it can handle some back street nonsense without rolling over and not affecting ride comfort too much.

If I was putting wheels on it, I’d probably look for some 5 spoke integra dc5 wheels, or some random period correct 15” wheels with 70 profile tyres.

The main downsides are that they had pretty basic stereos in Australia, they only have k24a1 which makes about 160hp, manuals tend to have pretty burnt out clutches, no reverse camera etc.

The dream would be to put a k24a3 into it, slap a very mild turbo kit on it and tune it for 400hp as a sleeper, but honestly I just love the idea of having a pretty basic suv all over again.

[rainydaydriversclub]

Quick build idea:

Buy a 2002-2005 Holden Cruze (based on the Suzuki ignis but awd and different styling)

Swap out the 1.3/1.5L engine and put a 1.6L from a swift sport, retaining the stock manual awd gearbox.

Find an ignis sport front bumper, slap it on. Instantly have an awd ignis sport with 100kw

[rainydaydriversclub]

i love the gen2 honda CRV but it has one weakness...

i really just need honda in 2002 to design the CRV with a two door short wheelbase model, like toyota with the rav4 and suzuki with the vitara.

can you imagine the absolute insanity of having an AWD manual K24 powered offroader with a wheelbase smaller than a yaris and the eventual addition of a temu turbocharger.

im slowly coming around to the honda AWD system, its not perfect but it does what it needs to and by that i mean it will hookup in a roll race and allow you to put your foot down out of a corner in gravel.

[rainydaydriversclub]

its been a hot minute but i think a cool daily build would be:

AE110 corolla sedan in manual (tricky spec to find a but doable)

Gravel rally suspension ($2k AUD gets you a pretty decent set of adjustable coilovers)

thick rear swaybar (for that sweet sweet chassis rotation)

ST204 celica front seats

C60/C160 6 speed transmission (4.5 final drive, shorter ratios, possible LSD)

15x7 Speedline gravel wheels with 195/60/15 gravel tyres.

single light (zenki) front end swap with Stock GT front bumper

stock 7AFE engine, maybe put an intake and headers on it, slightly lightened flywheel, upgraded blacktop 4AGE oil pump. supposedly you can flash tune them to 100kw atw but i think 75kw would be fine.

basically a luxurious offroad commuter you could build for $10k

[rainydaydriversclub]

a non-GT4 celica is definitely my new dream beater...

[rainydaydriversclub]

cars i would buy now if i had the money:

in descending order of price:

Ferrari 360 - the "budget" ferrari that influencers are jumping on, theres a ton out there for less money than expected and they will never get cheaper.

porsche panamera - bottomed in price, insane car for the price.

Porsche boxster - same deal, just starting to go up in price again.

mitsubishi Verada/Magna - AWD V6 sedan/wagons with sport oriented tuning and racing pedigree. slowly disapearing.

swift sport - clean examples are going for $4k, perfect daily with room to be modified in the future.

any RWD lexus - these have bottomed out hard, especially the LS430, the GS300, and the is200 (and really any gen2 lexus is).

Mercedes with high mileage - you can get an E350 with full service history for $5k.

Honda CRV - gen2 manual CRVs are cheap as for now, but i foresee them jumping in price soon. future cult classic like the gen1 rav4.

hyundai Scoupe - celica st204 clone with less weight and truly unrecognised styling. future classic for peanuts

st204 celica - same as above but unrecognised masterpiece of a car.

GC8 impreza - base AWD model in manual. spend some time and money cleaning one up and it would be a good daily along with being a fun car to be silly in.

any post 2000 hatchback with a manual - $1k will get you the funnest/most reliable car you will ever drive.

[rainydaydriversclub]

also maintaining that an automaker just needs to build a 600kg 4 seat hatchback with barely 100hp and it will sell better than anything available today.

think smart car chassis crossed with a suzuki swift engine crossed with an early 2000s kei car.