This 100-year old man bought a £100k Lexus for his birthday
If you’ve never given much thought to what you’d buy yourself for a 100th birthday treat, take this opportunity to consider the options. A frame for your telegram from the Queen? A really smart cardigan? Or perhaps a £100,000 hybrid luxury saloon car? Yes, that’s a bit worthier of a ten-decade life, we reckon.
Former Army Major and 25-time Lexus-buyer Barry High OBE did just that this week, collecting a specially customised ‘Centenary Celebration Edition’ Lexus LS600h from his favoured dealer in Cheltenham. And when you get to 100, there’s no need to drive yourself – Barry has his own chauffer. Many happy returns, sir. Now, who wants to tell him Lexus has already revealed the new, replacement LS…
A cute kitten caused an eight-lane highway shutdown in Abu Dhabi
Traditional superstition states that it’s bad luck for a black cat to cross your path. Abu Dhabi police take this sort of thing really seriously. Mirrors are banned in case they get broken and they’ll arrest anyone who tries to walk under a ladder.
No surprise, then, that this week the authorities shut down a busy highway in the Gulf to rescue a lost black kitten that was stranded by the central reservation. If that’s not a good use of police resources then we don’t know what is. We don’t have a picture of rogue feline, so here’s a black Jaguar instead.
This is the cheapest way to put a brand-new Mercedes in your garage
Want a new Benz for $10,000? US customers can have just that, from later this year. Only it doesn’t drive you anywhere. Or move. It’s actually just a scalable block of batteries – a rival to Tesla’s PowerWall, no less.
The idea is that these batteries store electricity you’re generating yourself, from a wind turbine or solar panels. Then you can have it pick and choose when to draw cheap power from the national grid, and when to switch to battery power to save money. Though obviously you’ll need it to save you $10,000 before you actually save anything at all…
Kissing a Kia for 50 hours doesn’t mean you actually get to keep it
In ‘people with way too much free time’ news, several people in Austin, Texas have taken part in a contest to win a brand-new Kia Optima. Ooh, shiny. The challenge? To kiss it, non-stop (err, apart from a few ten minutes breaks when they felt tired, weirdly), for up to 50 hours. Among the great achievements clocked up by the human race, this isn’t exactly the moon landing.
Anyway, after the requisite 50 hours, seven of the original 20 contestants were still locking lips with the Korean repmobile, so names were drawn instead to see who got to keep the car. The losers got Justin Timberlake and Bruno Mars concert tickets, lip salve, and a mirror to take a long, hard look at themselves in.
Bamboo could be the new carbon fibre
Ford is investigating using bamboo to make cars. And that’s no crazy idea: bamboo has huge compressive strength, grows about three feet a day, is lighter than metal and doesn’t create CO2 when it’s made. In fact, because it’s a plant, it actually helps absorb the stuff. Hoorah for photosynthesis. Bet you never expected to read that sentence on TopGear.com.
“Bamboo is strong, flexible, totally renewable”, says Janet Yin, a materials engineering supervisor at Ford’s Nanjing Research and Engineering Center. And imagine the motorsport implications. A wooden F1 car? Recycling old front wings by letting pandas nosh them for breakfast? Bring on the bamboo revolution..
This 21-year old Mercedes has only ever done 80 miles
And there’s a very good reason for that: its careless owner lost the keys back in 1996. Effectively making them careless and carless. As such, this smart but not otherwise remarkable SL 500 (post-service and with a new set of keys) just went for £56,000 at auction. So, if you’re forever losing things, bear in mind that two decades later, it could be quite a valuable flaw.
This Jeep Renegade is for people who like running muddy marathons
Tough Mudder, if you haven’t heard, is a sort of punishment dreamt up to hurt people who are naturally fit and outdoorsy. There are sequences of obstacles to clamber over, under and through, set out along a half-marathon length course, and if there’s an inch of your body not doused in dirt by the finish line, you’re immediately disqualified.
If you’d like to express your penchant for that sort of sadistic dirty weekend, then Jeep will sell you this Tough Mudder-edition Renegade. It only comes in orange or black, and 100 will be made. Oh, and it costs almost £28k. But that’s fine, because the only folks interested are already lunatics.
Vauxhall ‘reckless’, say British MPs
A committee of MPs investigating Vauxhall’s handling of its fiery Zafira problem has launched a stinging attack on the carmaker, calling it ‘reckless’ and ‘morally reprehensible’. It follows a spate of fires in the Zafira B people-carrier caused by problems with the heater system. Though 161 carbeques have been recorded, no injuries have been linked to the issue.
The posh new DS 7 Crossback is massively expensive
As per usual for a new premium car, the new DS 7 Crossback is starting out life with a launch edition, titled ‘La Premiere’. It comes with a BRM watch, plus two 12.3 inch infotainment screens, 20 inch wheels and many driving aids. Get this: the price is £42,650. Sink or swim time for DS, anyone?
Audi may sell Ducati to help pay for dieselgate
According to a report from Reuters, VW Group is contacting interested parties regarding selling its motorcycle brand, Ducati. Audi acquired the Italian superbike legend in 2012 for £725m, but with big compensation bills to pay, VW Group could cut it loose and return to being a purely four-wheeled operation. Just goes to show: crime doesn’t pay…
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