this_

Some of these comments are coming from someone who's started thread pointing out what toilets are like in Canada

If I am 17, perhaps you guys can try to not sound younger than me?

Danny B

Ignore them my friend, they are all a bunch of old busybodies. Come to Canada and enjoy the car enthusiast community.

There are not many petrol heads like us left anymore, I imported my beauty over from England back in 2007. So glad I did as she is a one off. I get so many compliments from people.

Good luck to you

sharkus

Coming in late to this one, but I can say there is a similar car culture in Canada as there is in the UK, or at least in the GTA area.

Before coming to Canada I was part of the local subaru car scene. I took over organizing a small monthly meet from a friend who didn't have time to do it, and I went along to at least one, if not two, other monthly meets. No, we were not the usual chav / racer boy types. There was, on occasion spirited driving. To be honest, most of it was all about the social aspect of things, and I made and still have some good friends from those days.

I had started to see if there were local subaru clubs in the GTA, and indeed there was the Toronto Subaru Club, and it was very similar to how things were in the UK, and that's certainly a good thing.

Alas, I didn't get another subaru over here, so I didn't pop along to many meets, but I believe there are things still going on )

this_

I think they are too..

is that a fiesta encore ?

this_

Is there a bigger car enthusiast community in Canada? To be honest I see less and less here. there are some places in the uk where social meets related to cars are banned, is it similar in Canada ?

caretaker

Sure there is a car enthusiast community. There are rally clubs, vintage clubs, stock car racing clubs, drag racing clubs, etc. There are murky meetings of youth with little cars with large mufflers in parking lots at night, but I'm not out that late. Is that what you meant by social meets?

Danny B

Here on the west coast there are huge meets. This one in a place called Tsawwassen https://mgreviews.com/2017/04/23/pho...e-spring-meet/ had 500-700 cars attend.

As I mentioned in one of my previous posts, you will see a large number of RHD Japanese cars in the photos. Mainly due to their low mileage, above average condition and high power compared to the N. American equivalent.

BTW, I was joking about the Fiesta

caretaker

They are just little shitbox cars, like this:

Piff Poff

Red Deer Cruise Night Home regularly gets 500 plus cars throughout the summer.

dbd33

Purely in the interest of advancing this thread, I've just been driving in England, in RHD and LHD cars, and in Switzerland. I think an automotive enthusiast should not choose Canada. England has a wider variety of cars, they come in colours other than greige, they are driven much faster and much more precisely. There's a general culture of interest in motoring; on the plane I watched Idris Elba attempting to drive a rally car and read some of a biography of Bernie Ecclestone. You be waiting a long time to see a famous Canadian in a television program extolling the joy of speed or to read of the shading dealings of a Canadian billionaire secondhand car dealer.

The useful motoring knowledge I gained from the excursion is that one should source one's satnav commentary from France, the agony of taking the wrong exit from the motorway is much diluted when machine says "Oo la la!".

Atlantic Xpat

Weekend before last I rented a car to drive from London to Norfolk and back for the weekend. I got "upgraded" to some faux SUV (which is what I drive here) called a Renault Kajagoogo or something similar. It was not greige but it was so chronically underpowered that one wasn't going to gain any enjoyment from throwing around the country lanes. Still, it was nice to stir the petrol myself for once.

The need for eternal vigilance to avoid the GATSO's is a bit tiresome but it did come with a nice satnav which told me where there were. Not having to worry about speed camera's is I suppose a motoring plus in Newfoundland but its rather outweighed by having to worry about the rim eating potholes, errant moose and bloody awful local drivers.

dbd33

I had hoped for a Citroen Cactus rental as I've never driven a car with spiky rubber panels but ended up with a Vauxhall Insignia, a diesel with automatic engine stopping and an electronic handbrake. It sounded like my tractor but didn't run as well.

Tangram

Priceless

sharkus

I would take a stab and say that car meets in and around Thurrock and Southend are probably where you'd find meets being banned. The youth did get up to silly antics in car parks, and, unfortunately on the road too in those areas.

The sad thing is, it messes it up for those of us who do have "ricer boi" type cars - and yes, my subaru would have been bundled into that class - but are actually normal types who don't wish to loon around doing burnouts and racing up and down the road. That's not to say we all stuck to the speed limit all the time, or popped over to France for a bit of a blast in the wee early hours, but we certainly weren't being total frigging dickheads, unlike a lot of the youth.

From the scooby point of view, we saw the earlier model year of cars falling into the price ranges of the chavvy types, and thus giving anyone owning such a car a tarring with the same brush. Exactly the same kind of thing that happened with the XR3i and RS Turbo.

Alas the same type of idiots do exist here. There was some local meet that attracted police attention due to some total idiots doing burnouts, and causing dismay for the majority of people who were there.

spookylady

i got screwed by hydro when i bought my Volt in Ontario ....