This is not the way to drive a bus. The photo shows it bottomed out just under the engine bay and it is probably safe to say the driver deviated from his authorised route. Traffic on River Road, Lane Cove is back to Greenwich Road and a thunder storm is pending for the area.

And friends ask why I refuse to live in Sydney (or even Greater Sydney) anymore. In the '70s I was at North Head/Manly, Holsworthy, Randwick and Vic Barracks in Paddington. Now I have to take my wife to St Vincent's Hospital off Oxford Street every six weeks for treatment but we use buses and taxis as I would not even dream of driving in the CBD anymore.

Traffic comes with the territory, you have to pick your times.

I loathe school zones, especially the 1 km span on Pennant Hills Rd, starting at Kings School.

I am just glad I was driving the other way this arvo. I had River Road almost to myself, which is rare for this time of the day. I am sure the bus will survive the mess it was in today. There was some slight panel damage at the rear where the road grabbed it but these things are built pretty tough as they have to be in service for 35 years.

This model runs on gas but the holders are on the roof, well out of harm's way.

About twenty minutes later, traffic started to back up northbound on the Pacific Highway. River Road is a rat run for Highway traffic heading towards Gladesville and Ryde so both routes were chokkas.

When the previous government built the Lane Cove Tunnel, Epping Road was reduced from three lanes to one and all this did was force more people to rely on River Road, which was never really designed for the traffic it carries. Go figure. Another political and bureaucratic brain explosion, feeding the coffers of Transurban.

Look at all the Toyotas in the picture, draining wealth from Australia to Japan. No doubt the bus is also a foreign-owned brand.

There's no cars made here any more, so the very act of buying one drains wealth.

Same as petrol, computers, toys... anything really. There's little manufacturing in this country now.

Look at all the Toyotas in the picture, draining wealth from Australia to Japan. No doubt the bus is also a foreign-owned brand.

The Camry was Australian made until last year but surely you haven't forgotten the nickname for buses in Sydney since the phase-out of the Leylands...

The blue Mercedes. These buses are assembled on a backbone chassis, which permits the low floor design but the coachwork and fitout is done here. The Government owns about 2,600 of them, some of which are operated privately and there's another 2,000 operated directly by private companies. The newer ones are painted in the TFNSW (sky blue/white) livery.

Well, GMH was building police cruisers for the US in Australia until not long ago. VZ Commodores with Chevrolet badges!

You'll see a couple of them as runway chase cars in the Mythbusters episode on the U2 spy plane....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0bwlQMch3s

Prior to that they were sold in the US as Pontiac G8s. I was thinking of picking one up for a road trip in the US next year but they have held their value too well...

The Caprice was the most recent model sold to the US as a chase car. The yankee coppers love them. Saudi Arabian police have been driving Caprices for about 15 years. I can't help thinking that despite union self-destruction, if the local carmakers were Australian-owned they would have had a better chance. It is widely known that Holden, Ford and Toyota wanted to build the models that were becoming popular here but head-office obstruction from Detroit, Dearborn and Tokyo got in the road. For the boneheads that are at the top, it's less challenging just to shut factories down.

"The blue Mercedes chassis"

Interesting because I was surprised to learn that Germany enjoys an even larger trade surplus with the world than China does!

Trump is correcting USA's dire current-account and Budget deficits with tariffs, which are working: just yesterday he said "money (from tariffs) is already flowing into the treasury".

The Oz designed VZ chassis is used in a Cadillac by GM.
The Pontiac G8 was favourably compared to a BMW 5 series in the US. They actually handle and stop as well as go!

I find it quite a contradiction that we are told that Australians don't want a rear wheel drive 6 Cylinder vehicle any more.

What we want is either a small/medium sized front wheel drive E/W engine vehicle or a 4 wheel drive larger vehicle.

Now that manufacturing of the Ford Falcon and Holden Commodore has ceased along comes Kia with a 6 Cylinder rear wheel drive vehicle (The Stinger) which by all accounts is selling well.

What is wrong with this picture??

We do want big sixes and eights. That is Aussie folklore. The problem is that a majority of Australians buy on price, not spec. That's why there's more Hyundais on the road now. If you have a struggling family that needs a car, will you buy one for $20,000 and put up with its many limitations or splurge on the $40,000 that can carry five or even six people in comfort plus their luggage and tow a caravan?

With the various free trade agreements and Labor's 40 year chip away at import tariffs, the gap between the prices of local and imported cars just became too much. When that is added to a loss of R&D subsidies and the TWU getting heavy with the carmakers, that was the end of it.

I own a Holden VY Commodore wagon because I need the space. The boot in these is huge. The only issue I have is that these are very low to the ground and I am not getting younger. In a year or so I will probably shift to an Adventra, which is the AWD version of the Commodore and comes complete with more than 200mm of ground clearance.

The biggest issue with the closure of all Australian assembly lines is the complete wipeout of the once-popular large car market. People no longer have a choice in what they are buying apart from small hatches and SUVs, none of which have the same boot space or rear legroom as a Commodore or the Ford Falcon.

The future is grim. The remaining 41 countries that still have assembly plants still receive subsidies from their host governments for R&D or the manufacturing operations and we, the suckers, just buy the distress stocks outputted by these factories.

Not all is lost. Trucks and some buses are put together here from TKD kits because they fit better into shipping containers that way and is thus more economical. Other buses are made here for state governments as I described before. Nissan has a component factory here where castings and finished parts are made, including for their emerging electric cars. Holden and Ford have kept their engineering operations alive and still use their proving grounds. But there is no mainstream car assembly here now and that is putting a big dent in the economy because of the loss of jobs, skills and taxation revenue.

It's just a repeat of when the electronics and whitegoods industries caved in.

GovCo's policy of only buying 4 cylinder cars didn't help things either.