I recently moved to Hobart from Melbourne. I organised the trip on the Spirit, and it wasn’t until I reached the port that I realised it was a week before Targa. Getting onboard with a bunch of all-out race cars - I took it as a sign to remain hopeful. I was leaving a city with a vibrant, diverse car culture. The Tassie car community might be smaller, but it would be there.

And I’m sure it is out there, I just haven’t met it head-on yet. Busy with new work, new home, new surroundings, I’ve only been a casual observer of what’s occupying Tasmanian roads. My first impressions:

• The most popular car is the first and second-gen Subaru Forester. They’re everywhere.
• Also seen more often than expected: Tesla Model 3s, and AE95 4WD Rollas. What other car blog will pair those models in a sentence.
• Data suggests the state has the oldest fleet in the country. If you couldn’t guess from the Forester, I fact-checked by witnessing a running first-gen Mitsubishi Nimbus. Surely no-one’s seen that since the nineties.
• So many cars labelled with stickers. Not nice laser-cut ones on glass. Big rectangular ones for who-knows-what, cheap stock, and applied on paint!