HGO FUTURE, page-12

The mysterious sophisticated investor has one of three hurdles to Jump.

* The ability to invest $500,000

* A CPA's certificate that one has $2.5m of nett assets

* A CPA"s certificate varyifying $250,000 of income in the past two years.

Enough of that boring stuff. I'm a bit like Mrs Wilson when It comes old cars. Love being able to spin the wheels occasionally but really miss ABS breaking. You loose the pedal pumping skills as the reflexes get a bit tardy.

On the subjects of spinning wheels and how much cars have improved I had the pleasure of owning a few Jags on my journey through the brands and I hate to admit the foolishness but I discovered by accident if you put those temperamental V12's into manual mode and first gear and flatten the throttle they would roar to the red line and (unlike modern cars that protect you and themselves with amazing stuff) the gear box would change into second gear at full revs in a nano second ( rather than let you blow up the motor) and spin the wheels. Fortunately one quickly learnt that the cars weren't built to suffer that sort of abuse and Golden Spanner would notice the whine in the diff before the warranty ran out.

Its amazing how every few years there is a new addition to the things that make driving safer and more rewarding and how much value new cars loose in the first couple of years.

I was interested in discovering during my recent search that if dealers register a demonstrator for two years they have to pay stamp duty when they renew the rego for the second year but don't have to pay the luxury car tax if they don't sell it within that second year. Some strange things are explained by the way the system works. Old demonstrators don't necessarily mean the cars are hard to sell.