In Part Three of the ‘Dirty Little Secret’ Saga, the shoes are secured, and the team make their way across the border for the extraction…

With the collection date fast approaching, 48hrs prior to departure some really good news came through: A message from Brian Goodwin of Goodwin Racing USA advising that multiple packages were arriving.

Confession:I did something naughty and I have to fess up. While pondering my wheels dilemma, I toyed around with sending Brian an email to see if I could order the limited-custom-order 14x7+19 RPF1s and asked if I could use his Paypal system to purchase rather than the temperamental-for-Australian-credit-cards online shopping cart through his website. Sadly, Brian advised me that he didn’t have any in stock for immediate delivery. I was disappointed, especially considering the online store did show these wheels as being available.

After discovering that the website store would accept an Amex card, my arrogance got the better of me, so I decided to try and order the wheels. A few days of thumb twiddling and then seeing my amex bill deduct the amount later than week made me think that the order had gone through. Which was a problem.

Being impatient, I had also been looking through yahoo.jp for wheels as a backup plan if the RPF1s weren’t available. As fate would have it, a set of 14x6.5 +14 Watanabes came up. Compulsive buying mentality kicked in, I won the auction and before I knew what I had done a second set of wheels were on their way to me.

With a lack of wheels clearly no longer a problem, we set off to Melbourne in my parent’s X-Trail. The plan was to leave at 2.00am to make Melbourne by the early afternoon. Three friends (Matt, Karl and Will) were to join me and help share the driving, with a fourth (Nath) flying down the following day to meet us and be a fresh driver for the return home.

I took the helm for the first three hours. From there Will took over the drive until breakfast at around 8.00am. After devouring a few McMuffins we were off until a well deserved coffee break at Holbrook, where you will find the “Best Coffee in Hume”.

Matt took the last and final stretch to Melbourne. By 12:30, we were in the northern suburbs of Melbourne taking out some cash at a teller machine, but not for the purchase of a car. This road trip was also an opportunity for Matt to pick up an HKS exhaust for his NC roadster, so a slight detour for parts retrieval was undertaken before completing the main objective of the trip: to pick up Sake, an immaculate NA8 clubman roadster.

Upon viewing the car, it was clear that the journey was well worth it. Sake was 10000% better than I had anticipated, and had to pinch myself. Tiredness and hunger went away as I did a quick test drive of the car with its owner, Lachy.  My first impression of the car was a good one, but the second one not so - It was when I tried to manoeuvre SAKE along a driveway when I realise that no power steering is hard work at slow speed and resulted in a scrape to the Garage Vary front lip. 

Forgetting this slight mishap, the deal was closed, papers signed, money exchanged and the X-Trail was loaded with the spare parts that were also part of the sale. At this time we were joined by Nath and our mazda parts-pusher and Melbourne friend, Dan, to assist us celebrating the occasion – a late lunch in Lygon Street and dinner at Garage Cafe - an eatery focused on the car owner where you can park your car in the venue and eat next to them.

By 10.00pm I was almost ready to sleep standing up, so the five of us retreat to the hotel for another early start. 5.00am would come too soon but driving Sake home would more than compensate a second sleepless night …

Part one of the Dirty Little Secret can be found here 

Part two of the Dirty Little Secret can be found here 

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