Upper Middle Petrol Head:

Stefano Lubiana's wines (http://www.slw.com.au/slw/index.html ) have forged an excellent reputation within Tasmania and the rest of Australia over the last twenty five years, so it was with great anticipation that the UMPHs headed to the company's  winery and recently opened osteria - located  in   R owbottoms Road, Granton,  twenty minutes' north of Hobart - for a lazy Sunday lunch .  Adding another degree of expectation was the fact that on the previous few  times they had tried to get a table, the place had been booked solid. For those of you who don't know what an osteria is, the uninitiated's best friends at Wikipedia advise that it's an Italian place serving wine and simple food.  (Google and Wiki to UMPH's rescue again!)   So far, so good:  Lubiana's osteria, overlooking the River Derwent upstream of the Bridgewater Bridge, oozes Mediterranean style.  It also serves wine.  Very good wine inde...

UMPH is beginning to appreciate the benefits of arriving at Classics a bit earlier in the morning than has been his norm.  For a start, it's a lot easier to find a legitimate parking spot.  Then there's the opportunity to hear and see the cars arriving ... For sure, the Maserati Ghibli below is a thing of rare aesthetic beauty.  But seeing it parked is only half the story ; its understated yet menacing V8 rumble somehow completed the experience.  It even sounded good as it reversed into its parking spot.  Is it?  Yep, that Woodheap fella at the left of photo. According to its owner, it's the only one in Hobart and was red until a few years back when he had it sprayed metallic dark grey.  The colour, like its exhaust note, is wonderfully understated. Also in grey was this very tidy EH Holden, tastefully up-graded with a simple set of mags shod with BF Goodrich Radial TA s (tyre of choice for the hot Aussie car set during the 1980s). ...

       A few years ago, UMPH saw a doco in which one pundit suggested that a big, sharp spike mounted in the centre of a vehicle's steering wheel would be a very effective road safety device, his theory being that the clear and present threat of a grisly death would ensure that the driver drove sensibly and thus avoided crashing in the first place.  The expert was probably only half joking but the thought has stayed in UMPH's mind ever since.  It doesn't really matter if the spike-advocate was having a laugh, thinking laterally or was just plain mad, because his idea will never eventuate.  In fact, the safety aspect of vehicles' design and manufacture has now become one of their largest selling points and, rather than scaring motorists into driving more cautiously, the trend has been to cosset them more and more from any threat of harm through the ever-increasing use of technology.   Take, for example, Ford's new Ranger utes (or pick...

UMPH isn't sure if Cygnet's presumably eponymous Red Velvet Lounge ever actually featured such an item of furniture.  Once upon a time there was a red vinyl lounge, just inside the front doors on the left, but a velvet one ...?  It doesn't really matter, though, because t he UMPHs are long-time fans and, like many Hobartians, really felt its absence while it was being rebuilt after last November's fire.  However, they didn't rush there the minute it reopened.  It's not that they didn't want to, mind you ; they had been thinking about it for a few weeks but knew that it'd be as busy as right from the get-go.  Let's face it, it was always well patronised before the fire forced its eight month hiatus, so it was bound to be a huge hit once it reopened. So, what did they think?  They were certainly correct on the first count :  even at 2:00 o'clock on a mild-ish Saturday afternoon it was full of lunch-time diners.  Then there was a barely percept...

Many, many years ago, when UMPH was but a boy, double de-clutching was considered de rigeur for drivers with sporting aspirations (or should that be pretensions ?).  The fact that synchromesh had been well and truly invented decades earlier didn't diminish the allure of blipping the throttle on down-shifts, signalling to anyone within earshot that you really knew your stuff.  Or that's what UMPH thought, anyway.  The fact is that double de-clutching isn't really all that necessary, so long as your car's manual transmission has working synchro.  However, that's not to say that there aren't benefits to the practice and, if you own an earlier classic vehicle, it remains a skill that's pretty much essential if you don't want the ignominy of grating your gears, which will inevitably occur just when your pride and joy's attracted some admirers and you're trying to look nonchalant as you're cruising by. For the uninitiated, double de-clutching...