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Originally Posted by Courier Mail
So what's it like ? Is it scary ? The ultimate adrenalin rush ? Also are you able to say what sort of people are members of the M1 300 club ? Do they generally work in the motor industry ? Blue collar workers / Professionals ?
Is there a particular section of the M1 that's favoured ?It's a massive adrenalin rush. I think the fact that you could get caught adds to this rush. I haven't personally been involved in a police chase, but I know a couple of the boys did one night, and they reckon it was the biggest high they've ever had. bar none.
You'd be surprised. Most of the guys who have 300+ km/hr capable cars aren't in the motor industry at all. Most are profesionals. They need to be to be able to afford to modify their cars to the extent that they could reach those speeds.
In fact, if you passed us in the street, you probably wouldn't even pick that we were "hoons". Most people have this stereotypical view that hoons are your long haird, VB drinking, winnie blue smoking bogans. This may have been the case a generation ago, but this is no longer the case.
You'd probably also be surprised at the age of some of the guys in the group. Again, people imagine that people supposedly stupid enough to race on the highway would be young, but the average age would probably be close to 30. It's probably just that the young hoons are the ones stupid enough to get caught, and they are the ones who make your paper for all to read about. Those who are a little older, are a little more wise, and choose when the time is right to race. It's more organised than you might think. It's not just a mater of driving down the road on a Sunday arvo and you suddenly accelerate to 300 km/hr or race the young clown beside you just cause he is egging you on.
No specifc section, just anything that is long and fairly straight. Probably try and avoid areas close to civilisation though (close to brisbane, gold coast, service stations on the hway)
I'm not too concerned if you write a story on this, as I don't think I've given you any details that are too specific or would identify us to police, but if I have, I'd ask you to please keep them out of the press as the other guys in the club would be a little annoyed if they all got taken down cause of a few posts I made on the CM website and a few emails I sent on of their writers. Although some of the guys would probably think it's even more of a thrill if the police were out to get them haha
Anymore questions feel free to ask, but as above, I'm not going to give away anything too specific.
Just about done on the question front I think – but I am very grateful for your cooperation and I agree that there’s nothing you’ve told me that could identify you and your fellow members.
I’m not very mechanically minded but can you give me a bit of an idea of what sort of modifications are necessary to a car to help it reach 300km/h ?
When you said weight was so important, I imagined a group of men with jockey-like frames racing… are members generally fitness-conscious ?
Think that’s about it. I know my boss is going to want some sort of pic. Any suggestions would be much appreciated.
You need to make quite a few modifications to cars to make them capable of reaching the speeds we do. The majoirty of "off the showroom floor" cars won't get anywhere near 300 km/hr.
Might as well start from the ground up so one fo the basic things people do is to change their tyres to tyres that are rated for the intended speeds. Most normal "family car" type tyres aren't designed to do 300 km/hr. Sure they probably would, btu I wouldn't want to risk prolonged exposure to such speeds.
From there, tyres must be attached to lightweight wheels, because at high speed, std wheels would carry too much energy and make it a lot harder to stop. Behind the wheels are brakes which are upgraded significantly to larger models. These are required to dissipate the massive amount of heat generated when braking from 300km/h, especially if the lead cars radio back that there are police up ahead.
Suspension must be heavily modified, with typically heavier springs, and matched shock absorbers. These upgrades somewhat mitigate the risk of travelling at high speed (and not all members do these), however they alone wont get you to 300.
First you need the physical gearing to reach 300km/h road speed. By that I mean most cars would over-rev well before they reached such speeds. If you don't have the specific gear ratios, it's physically impossible to reach beyond a certain speed. A lot of vehicles "off the showroom floor" simply do not have a tall enough gearbox to reach 300km/h, and even if they do, in most cases the standard gears are not strong enough to cope with the power delivered from the upgraded engine!
Last but not least is an engine that is capable of delivering in most cases a minimum of 600HP, however most of the cars in the club are turbocharged and closer to the 800HP mark. Most of the guys opt for turbo charged model cars as it's much much easier and cheaper to make power.
Some of the guys have also modified their cars to included roll cages just in case anything should go wrong. Some guys have even gone to the expense of setting up communication equipment in their car so they can be in contact with other members of the group while they are racing. Some of the guys use wireless bluetooth headsets, but I'm only using CB radio at this point. Although I'm looking to upgrade to bluetooth soon as CB radio can be overhead by anyone.
Haha, no, when I mentioned weight, I wasn't talking about peoples weight. Sure if people could lose a few kg's that might make a bit of difference, but the big gains are in removing weight from the car itself. You could easily remove a hundred kg's or so from a car by removing the interior, spare wheel, tool kit - basically anything that isn't really neccessary. Every kg you remove, means you have to make less horsepower to acheive the same acceleration and top speed. It's a lot lot cheaper to remove weight from your car, then to try and extract more hp out of your engine.
As far as pics, I doubt anyone in the club is too keen to have a photo of their exact car picuted, but I've attached some pics of some cars that are very indicative of the cars our members drive. The majority of them are japanses imports such as skylines, supras and wrx's, but we do have a couple of australian cars such as XR6 Turbos.
Compared to a lot of other posers, we try and keep our cars looking relatively stock appearance wise. A lot of younger guys will have cars with wild styling such as big wings, crazy paint jobs etc, but we prefer to be a little more subtle. It seems to draw less attention from the cops. Given most of us are a little older, we seem to get hassled a little less driving cars of this appearance. If these pics aren't suitable, I may be able to come up with something better, but can't guareentee it.
Just got that email - thanks for the pics, really appreciate you going to that much trouble. I think the editor plans to run the story tomorrow. I hope you're happy with it - my chief of staff found it fascinating (just as I do). The chief police traffic coordinator for the region wasn't too thrilled.. as you can probably imagine. He reckons he'd never heard of the club but another cop I spoke to said police were probably aware of it.. but it was "too hard" to police.
The editor mentioned the possibility of us filming one of your meets. I said I didn't think you'd agree to that - but if there is any chance, please let us know. It'd be a huge drawcard for our website.
Anyway, thanks again for all your help and if there's anything else that comes up you think we might be interested in, please don't hesitate to get in touch.
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