One one side, a two year old Honda CRV sporting computer controlled fuel injection with more processing power than NASA used to put a man on the Moon, all wheel drive, dynamic stability assist, traction control and a fuzzy logic algorithm that actually learns your driving style and adjusts the automatic gear change accordingly. On the other side is a 25 year old Toyota Camry with an odometer reading like a phone number that has just been put through its paces on a full throttle two hour run up the coast. Improbably this is a picture of the Camry jump starting a very poorly CRV, rather than the other way around…!

The first big run for the shitbox didn’t have the most auspicious start. I popped into Spotlight for a length of fabric, as you do, to find a bright green pool of radiator fluid under the car. Oops. I bunged in the bottle of leak stopper, checked the levels, cursed my idleness in not having joined NRMA, and then recklessly pulled onto the F3 for the two hour run up to Port Stephens. Twenty minutes in, I got my first surprise: a tiny button marked ‘cruise’. Being a button-presser by nature, I gave it a go and settled in to an absolutely unexpected smooth 100km/h cruise all the way up the coast. The revs stayed steady, temperature didn’t budge and best of all, the cruise button must have engaged some form of infinite improbability drive because the 200km trip only took a single litre of petrol according to the fuel gauge.

In a fit of unwarranted bravado, I decided to take a spin on the unsealed road into the Stockton sand dunes at Anna Bay, intending to only go a couple of hundred metres.  I now know that a light dusting of sand across a dirt road is one of the best ways of bringing a Camry to a gentle halt, it’s just a pity that these sorts of conditions are likely on the rally itself.  So, a bit of a worry that the shitbox turns wombat and digs to victory at the first sign of sand on the road surface – though we did have some luck with a passing 4WD who towed us out the 20m or so back to hard surface.

So the car succeeded beyond all expectations on the tarmac, and gave me a good lesson on the sand.  But finally, it was still able to roll into Artarmon and give its younger brother the kick up the bum it needed to get going again. I’m getting more and more optimistic about this shitbox after all.