I saw this word in a web news article from the Herald Sun. Apparently this is reckless driving, but is there an official definition?
And while we’re at it, is a muscle car still called a Yank Tank?
Hooning doesn’t require a car, you cah hoon around on a bicycle - we all did as kids. It’s just being fast and erratic. Here is hooning in an Act of Parliament.
A Yank tank wasn’t a muscle car, it dates back to stupid big beasts like the Pontiac Parissienne(?) and other ungainly behemoths.
“Hooning” is more or less reckless driving, but it could be defined slightly more broadly than that: driving down the street throwing beer bottles from a car with a loud exhaust system and a smoky engine could be called “hooning” even if the car is being driven conservatively. “Hooning” is a state of mnd. “Hoon” is a noun referring to the person who does it.
As for “Yank Tank”, that term isn’t heard much these days. I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s synonymous with muscle cars. Bear in mind that Australian cars have historically tended to be very big themselves, just not quite as big as some of the American ones. Famous Aussie muscle cars like the Ford GTHO Falcon are not Yank Tanks. An enormous Chrysler with soft 60s/70s “boulevard” suspension, and an acre of bonnet (hood) and boot (trunk) is a Yank Tank, but not a muscle car.
On preview, don’t ask has snuck in before me. The Pontiac Parisienne he mentions is a perfect example of a non- muscle car “Yank Tank”.
From the Macquarie Book of Slang:
Just googled a picture of a 63 Parisienne. Looks like a GTO. This fits what I thought a Yank Tank was, so maybe my definition of muscle car is all wrong.
The GTHO Falcon looked a bit less swoopy.
So Australians like their cars like Americans do?
How coincidental, I just heard the sound of a large act of hooning (ie squeling tyres, loud revving of engines) not far from me. Now there’ll be tyre tracks alll over the road.
Australia and the US still have a large proportion of their auto markets cornered by large rear-wheel drive sedans.
A lot of the reason for the similarities between Australian and US cars (particularly prior to the late 1980s) was/is because most of the major vehicle manufacturers here are/were subsidiaries of the major US auto companies - General Motors, Ford, Chrysler.
It was obviously cheap for these companies to import the production lines for particular models from the US. Often just the engine production lines were imported and it was usually after they had become outdated in the US. Australian cars were then built around these engines.
There were also a fair few imports.
Sorry, the above answer was supposed to be in response to 11811’s question: