Buying a Helicopter Car

I find this article from TheStar particularly funny. The article says that, “there is no need to conduct a physical evaluation test on the Eurocopter EC-725 Cougar helicopter prior to purchasing it because the Royal Malaysian Air Force has the helicopter’s technical data and documentation.”

As you all know, I have been going car shopping recently. I have already placed a booking fee for the car pictured above. Well, not exactly the car pictured above as I went for the brown silver instead. Also, I told them to get rid of some of the ah beng body work on it. Hopefully, I will be taking delivery of the car in a couple of weeks.

I had been holding on to the sales and specification brochures given to me by the sales people. I spent the last week studying it in detail and researching what the different things mentioned in the brochures actually mean. I have also been checking out online forums and reviews of the car to see if there were any major shortcomings for the car.

Then, after considering the quality/price, I made a preliminary decision to get this car. However, I still insisted on actually test driving it before making my final decision. So, I called up the nearest showroom and got them to send me a manual transmission (autos take the pleasure out of driving) model for testing. I took the car out for a little test drive around my housing area.

During the test drive, the sales person kept talking about the virtues of the car while I kept talking about the bad points (to try to drive the price down a little). In the end, I found the handling of the car to be a pleasure to drive and I could feel the latent power lying in the engine. I intend to do a further inspection in order to ensure that there are no defects before taking delivery.

So, I think that I did more due diligence into buying this car than our Ministry of Defence did for buying RM1.6billion worth of Eurocopters. I kind of shiver at the idea of placing our national security in the hands of these paper soldiers. Now, I truly wonder if we actually tested to see if the submarines we’ve purchased could sail through the Straights of Malacca.

I guess that the opposition government are finally getting on with their job of checking the government. I guess that they have given up on the notion of wresting control of power from the ruling government. They should just focus on doing a good job of being a strong opposition and take the next 4 years as an opportunity to learn about the intricacies of government.