False Idol

I refer to Billy Idol - rebel from my youth:

Only now, according to Fox News, he's promoting snitching on people who leave their engines idling when stationary, especially when parked outside schools.

Now I am actually in favour of this scheme - although not sure how it is actually policed - you're supposed to get a financial reward for grassing someone up.

But this is Billy Idol!  Not cool.

Meanwhile, in other Fox News, I learned that on Saturday, when I was looking for famous people born on Feb 29th, I could have had one of the greatest American racers of all time - if only he'd born one day later.

I refer to Mario Andretti who turned 80 on Friday:

If you look him up on Google you see he is the Italian-Born American whose birthplace is in Croatia. (But it was in Italy 80 years ago - they moved the border in the meantime)

 

I'd have thought he was even older than that.

 

Not that I need an excuse, but now for a picture of the most beautiful F1 car ever:

The Five Macans

In November 2013 I created a post called "The Fifth McGann".

It commemorated a new car in a gap that I thought didn't exist - the Porsche Macan.

Although, given the number of similar cars selling in large numbers from just about every manufacturer - none of which I would touch - the gap must have existed after all.

Porsche have now painted five of these in famous past Porsche racing liveries and launched them to the world in Singapore.  A marketing event that seems to have worked.  Car+Driver have it, Autoguide have it and I have it.  (No link to me having it, you're already here)

It irks me a bit because, at the end of the day, while Porsches have always appeared on race tracks - Macans don't.

Here are the cars:

I'd never heard of the red Salzburg car.  If I had to pick a favourite, it would be the Rothmans one: 

Not that they would be able to acknowledge a cigarette company nowadays.  Obviously, the Orange and blue Gulf livery is by far and away the most iconic.

 

But if you want a really iconic livery, painted on a car you could race, you have to look somewhere other than Porsche: