Wednesday, October 5, 2016

Forza Horizon 3: Digging the Outback's Buried Secrets

These are the hidden gems lurking through the Australian Outback...



...and right now, I've been picking multiple notifications about barn find rumors sprawling around Australia and while this is basically a headache to me, knowing that I spend the rest of the job hosting races per festival, it's all "challenge accepted" to me.

Having ventured through the "wasteland" for the rest of my break in search for buried secrets, these are the "buried secrets" I found...



The FJ40 is by no means one of the finest offroaders Toyota has ever made and whereas all SUV becoming more city-focused and luxurious, this bare-boned old-school classic deserves some respect as what every offroad enthusiasts do most of the time and with such reputation, no other modern offroader comes close to this legendary beast that conquered through the ends of the earth. How did I find it and what I did with it?






Three years after the first Holden, the 48-215 (FX) was made in 1948, its ute derivative, the 50-2106, was launched and you maybe asking why the number codes are plated to the founding Holdens of the Australian motoring history is because when these Holdens first made, they were marketed simply as "Holden" with no model name mentioned. Although this is basically a coupe utility truck based on the first Holden ever made, it remains one of the founding fathers of the ute genre and it's a waste to see eight decades of Aussie motoring greatness faded away with nothing, but still, driving one of these founding fathers will give you a clear idea why Australia made such unique cars like this ute.






Although the XB Ford Falcon was known for scoring touring car championship wins with the legendary touring car driver Allan Moffat behind the wheel, it became a star car when it propelled to famed in the Mad Max movies and because we have the Australian Outback on our side, it won't take a matter of time before prepping up a Mad Max reference in-game using the XB Falcon as the hero of the story, if you know what I mean? With this XB Falcon, this festival belongs to the mad. WHAT A LOVELY DAY!!!







This is the first time the Forza franchise ever featured a three-wheeler and this is their first; a Reliant Supervan III. Yes, we are all familiar with this three-wheeled curiosity because we seen this car making a mess on the Mr. Bean show several times and we seen Reliants gone kaput in Top Gear during the Clarkson, Hammond, and May years so this three-wheeled oddity needs no explanation, unless you are brave enough to drive it and not to make its "famous" mistake that sends this car tumbling down the road, which, unfortunately, I did most of the times.






The HQ Holden Monaro is the second generation model of the car Holden calls it "Australia's first sports machine", and having one of these Aussie beauties set off feels like "it's going to be very Monaro" because it's the great way to move. Sorry, did I said much?







And lastly, this massive-winged classic muscle car called the Dodge Charger Daytona HEMI. Although I heard that this winged monstrosity was once used for NASCAR, little did I know that 503 of these were made while 70 of these are HEMI powered and only 20 combined comes with a 4-speed manual gearbox. Those 20 kinds of Charger Daytona are ultra rare indeed and it's so rare, it garnered an estimated auction of 800,000 to 1,000,000 US Dollars. Amazingly, it even featured on Fast and Furios 6 as one of the cars Dom drove and I managed to go with my Vin Diesel impression by recreating Dom's Daytona Charger inside and out and take it for a spin. Scary but fun.


So with all of Outback's buried secrets unearthed by me, looks like there are some more barn find rumors that need to be unearthed and I'm feeling I'm as adventurous as a world-famous treasure hunter seeking for fame and fortune. I am. For now, I'm now taking a well-deserved rest.

No comments: