Pop Goes The Weasel

 I don't know why this Auto Express story pleased me so much this week.

But it did.

Plane to see the problem

I think this is why you don't have drive-ins at airports.

I wonder what he'll put on his insurance claim?

Something similar to this bloke from 2016 I suppose:

Electric Fires

 

I think we used to have one like that.

But, of course, that isn't what this post is about.

It's strange how the news stories I find to comment on come about.  There were only four in October while I've already done four this month and there are TWO that caught my eye on the BBC News site today.

The first one annoyed me - it is top of the most watched videos at the moment.  Now I realise that it is the job of the news to report on unusual events and, compared with those happening to fossil fuel cars (as Moggy from electric Classic Cars calls them) or piston cars (as Jonny Smith from The Late Brake Show calls them), electric car fires are very rare - even if they can be more spectacular - that rarity isn't mentioned at all.

In fact, given that the Liverpool Arena car Park fire was caused by an old Land-Rover and the Luton Airport Car Park fire was caused by a Range-Rover, then maybe the BBC should look to be covering the next JLR car to catch fire.

Talking of London airport car parks, the other story today didn't annoy me.  It tells of temporarily repurposing a car park at Stansted for a drive-in movie location.

"Airport bosses have stressed that pilots will not be distracted by a large LED screen at a temporary drive-in cinema at its site in Essex."

The whole article goes on about how it will be safe and all checks and authorisations are in place - I'm not sure why the whole article is about that - NOBODY HAS SUGGESTED OTHERWISE!

Do they think that some passing pilot might fancy watching Top Gun? It has been suggested before.

Master Stroke

As recently as Tuesday, I was reminding you all of how much I admire the writing of Car+Driver's Ezra Dyer.

Well, it looks like Hagerty also have a motoring wit in Matt Master.

Not sure why Hagerty (or maybe Facebook) waited until today to introduce me to the author of this article from May last year.

In it, Master so eloquently muses on how the Nissan Qashqai heralded the beginning of the end of the world as we knew it - and I totally agree with him.

Yuk.

OK, maybe we can't blame it for Brexit or Trump - blame The Daily Mail and Rupert Murdoch for those. But we can blame it, and moreover its success with Mail readers, school run Mums and the Chinese, for the demise of fun cars.

The article is well worth 4 minutes of anyone's time.

Judging by the comments at the end, he's managed to upset a lot of Qashqai drivers - some of whom can't even spell Qashqai.

Good.

The Nissan Juke is shit too.

Booty Fool

Another excellent Ezra Dyer piece the other day.

And, like one of his pieces I highlighted back in Feb, it involves Florida Man.

This particular Florida Man has done up his truck to look like a Border Patrol vehicle with a slightly different message on the side.

His says "Booty Patrol".  Amusing enough except the local law enforcement didn't see the funny side and ticketed him.  They got a fair bit of stick for it too - including from Ezra.

I think I may have to disagree for once with the brilliant Ezra here though.

Gabriel Luviano, who according to Scottish Legal News is only 18, was actually charged, not with the wording but instead with having blue lights on the truck - and given that the Police had put out earlier warnings of someone impersonating law enforcement, I wonder if he had been stopping young women in their cars in the hope of seeing whether or not they had nice bottoms or not.

That would make him officially creepy.

And how the hell has he got such a nice truck at the age of 18!

The Police must have been a bit worried of getting a conviction though as Florida Man with a Chevrolet Silverado sporting a backside reference got the last laugh last time.

Leap of Faith

 Those bloody Chinese ripping off western cars...

I mean just look at that uglified Fiat 500 clone - Fiat must be furious.

Actually it is Fiat that is going to be importing it into Europe!

It's called the Leapmotor T03 and Autocar have the story here.

They seem to think that it could leapfrog the competition to become the cheapest electric "proper" car on sale here.

One of the YouTube Channels I subscribe to is The Fully Charged Show.  I'm a bit in two minds about it because I really like Robert Llewelyn but I was really put off by this video. The woman presenting it may or may not have been correct but her attitude and arrogance made me feel like she was going out of her way to prove that synthetic fuels would never be viable so the whole piece felt too biased to be useful.  Then the chap on this piece just seemed to be trying too hard - he's talking about the forthcoming Citroen e-C3 which is another contender for the cheapest electric "proper" car on sale here.

Which is why I suddenly starting talking about YouTube subscriptions.

It wasn't a leap into the dark.

Smashed against a Wall Street

 I wonder if a picture of Leonardo DiCaprio will attract more clicks than Sylvia Krystel.

Although this post is more about the Lambo from "The Wolf of Wall Street" rather than the wolf himself:

Does that look silver to you?

It's white.

And a bit of a fixer-upper.

It's one of two nearly identical limited edition Lamborghini Countach 25th Anniversary Edition cars used in the film.  The only difference between them is that other one hasn't been wrecked.  The story is here.

The thing is, both cars are coming up for auction. One in Abu Dhabi, then the other one a fortnight later in New York.

Why not auction them together? - it'll make it more convenient for the new owner because I bet it is the same person.

And if it isn't, what is the future for the wrecked version?  It's going to take some buffing out and I wouldn't be surprised if the engine won't start - buying it could be a titanic mistake.