Love for a Toyota Celica sparks a good deed

Mark Chalhoub understands how much people can love a car. That's why he just helped out a woman who he sold a '95 Celica to 20 years ago.

Mark, director of New Lambton Auto Centre, has seen Helen Jackson around town in the years since and "she always kisses and cuddles me about how in love she still is with her car, believe it or not".

Unfortunately, the car was flooded in last week's storm. "The car had some serious issues," Mark said.

Helen asked Mark for help. The car was only insured for $2000, she needed a vehicle and her car was, well, dead.

Mark decided to help.

He lent Helen a car. Then he took a close look at the Celica. It was fixable.

He patched it up, detailed it and essentially gave it a second life at no cost to Helen.

Car dealers aren't always seen in the best light [bit like journalists!], so we thought we'd share Mark's story to challenge the stereotype [for him and us!].

Plus, it reminded us of the days when the Toyota Celica was cool. The model isn't around anymore. But it had a decent run - from 1970 to 2006.

We wrote recently about an epic journey that Elermore Vale's Tony Davis took across the country in his FJ Holden.

Well, what he thought was an FJ Holden.

As our recent photo of an old Holden in Charlestown's main drag showed, the Hunter Region has loads of cluey car sleuths who know every detail of particular models and the years in which they were made.

After our story about Tony's old Holden, Rankin Park's Bob Adams told Topics that it wasn't actually an FJ.

"It's a 48-215 Holden - commonly called an FX. It was one of the first Holdens. The things that give it away are the rear tail-light on the boot, the bumper-bar over-riders and the hubcaps," Bob said.

We told Tony about this, to which he replied: "Fancy not an FJ!"

A couple of readers also noticed some odd aspects of the photo.

"The steering wheel is not visible on the right-hand side and the rear-vision mirror appears to be facing left," Carey's Bay's Ron McSporran said.

So was the vehicle a left-hand drive? Nope. The number plate gives it away. The photo, for some reason, is a mirror image.

Tony from Merewether is sad to report that "the dominance of the twin-cab ute on our roads is now complete".

He spotted a Ford Raptor twin-cab highway patrol car. The V8 Raptors are apparently used for high-visibility road safety campaigns, as well as national parks and beaches. If they were ever used for a high-speed pursuit, Tony reckons they'd be like "driving an elephant on wheels at 160 kmh".