As you may know, I spent a few days entertaining Falken press hounds at the Nurburgring, Germany, in order to promote their new performance tyre.

For more background, you can read one or two threads which explain the trip in more detail. Now that I am no longer bound by gentlemanly agreements, a mutual declaration broken by the Falken side I’ll have you know, I am at last relatively free to tell you that the FK451 tyre is nowhere near as good as the Bridgestone RE01’s that were taken off for replacement.

In terms of product placement, the Falken advertising agency, Traffic, got a pretty good deal. Falken jackets worn by the whole crew, a V-Spec 2 Nur on German TV sporting Falken stickers and tyre’s, a free ride to a whole host of journalists and motoring press pundits, Evo included, around the Nurburgring GP circuit and finally good old king of gentlemanly conduct, mutual cooperation in an hour of need.

You see, Falken asked us to come over to Germany to save their two faced arses from ridicule as the Nismo Z-Tune R34 was trashed by a Nismo driver who’d forgotten that in Germany, people generally drive on the right hand side. As my car was visually identical to the Z-Tune, they shouted help from middle Europe and, well, we heard their weasel cry for help. With a press conference the next day and a whole host of international journalists hungry for something to go wrong, we practically saved their arses. What we should have done is walked away that first ill-fated morning when they turned up 4 hours late for the meeting, But oh no…this is what we got:

• I gave them 30 laps in my car on the GP circuit – They gave me a £1200.00 servicing bill which they’d promised to pay
• I gave them a lap on the Nordschleife – They gave me a set of destroyed discs
• I gave them unlimited exposure on one of the best Skyline sites in the world – They revoke their promise of banner advertising
• I gave up 2 days of pay to be there – They paid other members of our team to be there!
• I give them unlimited photo opportunities for their brochures and the German magazines – I get none of the promised printed material
• I give them 3 years of support by being at the 24hr Nurburgring race, together with fellow GTR enthusiasts – we get a Falken hand flag to fly

Some of you are saying “But you had great fun!” and yes, indeed I did. But when you’re promised a reimbursement of over £2500 of expenses and you get £200, you kinda feel a little fucked. I could go on, suffice to say that our relationship is severed thanks to the almost comical professionalism employed by Traffic. Screw you and I hope you’ll be in need of help soon as I’m keen to deny.

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