Child's Destiny to Drive.

 Never liked Destiny's Child.

Their music never did anything for me and that video always reminds me of chicken thighs.

But since Beyoncé has become a Country Star my view of her has changed.

Loved Texas Hold-'Em.

Including rhyming Texas with Lexus.

She appears in one of two BBC car stories I've read this week.

Beyoncé had to stop her show in Houston on Saturday night when the Cadillac she was flying over the audience in started to tilt.

Fortunately, they hadn't rigged up a real Cadillac.  She hung on to the flagpole and was safely lowered to the ground - presumably not onto the audience.

But there is some debate as to the speed of the lowering.

The BBC story clearly states that,

"Gasps could be heard from the audience when fans realised what was happening, but then applause as the star was slowly lowered to the ground, smiling and waving to the crowd."

Beyoncé's company, Parkwood Entertainment, said "She was quickly lowered and no one was injured."

Meanwhile, in Scotland, reported in the second BBC story,  a Woman was charged today with allowing a young child to drive a car through a village. The child, presumably her daughter, was barefoot and it was during bad weather.

The stupid woman also videoed the incident - which may well be why she was caught.

But worse than that, as the BBC made a point of reporting, during the drive, she was listening to The Sugababes.

Toyota 1120000, RAM 243

If I recall correctly, two weeks ago I pointed out Tesla winning a Recall score with Toyota.

Now Toyota have fought back and, along with their posher brethren over at Lexus, recalled approximately 1.12 million cars which have airbags that may not understand if there is a child in the deployment zone or not.

This is on the same day that RAM announced it was recalling 243 RAM 1500s.

Funnily enough the RAM 1500 DOESN'T have a 1500cc engine - this differentiates it from the Triumph 1500 which did.

Anyway, it took me some time to get my head around this story.

"Due to a manufacturing defect, the locking bracket installed to secure the centre front seat in the down position may not operate as intended.

This seating position is not fitted with a seatbelt and could be used by an occupant if the locking bracket does not function correctly.

In the event of a collision, an unrestrained occupant would be exposed to the risk of serious injury or death."

So they are saying that the front-central seat lock-down bracket can fail meaning that you could use the front-central seat as a seat.

At this point, I should point out that I got these stories, like a lot of my recall stories, from Australian site drive.com.au

RAMs converted to right-hand drive for the Aussie market have the front central seat fixed down so it can't be used - don't know why - I guess it must be something to do with the conversion.

So if the lock-down bracket fails and the seat actually CAN physically be used as a seat, why not install the seatbelt?  Otherwise, rather than have a locked-down seat, take it out altogether and put some storage there.  It feels like the Yanks are mocking the Aussies - G'Day Bruce, look at this seat we won't let you sit on!

"Owners have been told to not allow occupants to use the front centre seat until the repair is completed."

At which point, they won't be able to sit on the front centre seat!

Strewth!

E-Manual

No, it says E-Manual, not Emannuelle - but I'll leave the picture because more people are likely to click on the story than if I went with this one:

I bought my car because I liked it and I wanted it.

But I'd have liked it and wanted it even more if it had a manual transmission.

Unfortunately, they don't do Volvos in that flavour any more.  In fact, they don't do saloons or estates any more either here in the UK.

Which is very irritating.

I had sort of resigned myself to the prospect of no more manuals given the rise of the electric vehicle but wasn't expecting to have to suffer all cars being SUVs too.

Good job first MG and now VW have come to the rescue with the all-electric ID7 estate:

Even if it does look a bit Toyota-ish.

But then Toyota have come to the rescue over the manual transmission problem - Autocar have the story here of a Lexus UX300e (yes, an SUV but this will be offered on the entire electric Lexus & Toyota ranges) which has a fake manual transmission fitted. You can set it up just how you want it and even "stall" it if you've forgotten how to drive a stick - a niggling fear I have now since I've not had a go in one in over 12 months.  I was particularly heartened to read this paragraph...

All the usual manual features are there: engine braking, coasting and, most amusingly, no torque when you suddenly try and accelerate in top gear, which then brings with it the synthetic sound of parts of the cabin trim rattling. It sounds like a gimmick but it’s actually all rather believable.

We are almost in fantasy territory here.

Carry on, E-Manual.

Antisocial Media

Elon Musk (Twitter) has agreed to meet Mark Zuckerberg (Meta) in a cage fighting ring.  Here's the BBC News take on it.  Basically, they think Zuckerberg has MMA experience and Musk is not serious.

But is Musk serious about anything?

I know that he must be a fan of the brilliant Mel Brooks comedy Spaceballs - here's a clue:

Supposedly (and I tend to believe it) he got the idea for the Tesla Ludicrous mode and the Model S Plaid from those.

But that's yesterday's story.

So here today is a Lexus in Plaid Mode:

It is also purportedly approaching 290kph in an 80kph zone.

Drive.au.com have the story here.  This was on Instagram so one nil to Zuckerberg.

It looks like it was faked by a content creator called North Borders who says on his Insta page, "I don't have much to write here mainly because I can't be f----ed writing some heartfelt message about myself, I got other s--- to do"

Sounds like a charming young man.

Although that quote comes via Drive - I can't be f---ed checking it out for myself.

Entitled People

Yesterday, I posted about an entitled person.

Here's two more:

The first one is a Conservative police and crime commissioner married to a Conservative MP.

The second drives a Range Rover.

Or did until she got banned today.

They have both committed motoring offences.  I have marginally more sympathy for the first one of these - Caroline Henry who has been charged with five (YES FIVE!) speeding offences between March and June last year - the story, as reported by the BBC, is here.

However, those five offences were all between 5 and 10mph over the limit in a 30-Zone.

I speak as someone caught doing 37mph in a 30-Zone.  I got a speed awareness course which did educate me quite a bit and I now have to accept that 37mph is dodgy in a 30-Zone.

Normally, you can spot the fixed cameras and the mobile vans miles off - I was caught out by a van parked on the opposite side of the road in the dark.  So I don't understand how anyone could be caught 5 times including twice by the same camera.

The fact she drives a "silver Lexus with a personalised number plate" doesn't make her any more palatable and the fact she is a Conservative explains why she isn't looking to resign despite her promise to "reduce crime with action, not words".  Another example of her arrogance is that she ignored the advice of her solicitor and wrote to the Court stating that she was sorry, ashamed and embarrassed which may sound like contrition but made his job a lot harder.  Mind you, he's a solicitor so who cares?

The second woman is Sherrilyn Speid who,despite her name, didn't commit a speeding offence. No, she nudged climate change protesters with her car because they were blocking her route to take her child to school.  Her solicitor "challenged the driving ban as it would mean Speid could no longer shop for her mother, who has multiple sclerosis, drive to work, or drop off her son at school or football."

I suspect that she is rich enough to order an Uber but if not, then how about doing what unentitled people do and get on a bus?

Genesis Line-Up

I'm more of the Phil Collins time than the Peter Gabriel.

I always think of Collins as a Tory sell-out.  He said he'd leave the country if Labour got in.

Rock and Roll, Phil.

But of course, this is a car blog so I am talking about Genesis the car brand.  They have entered the UK market and their line-up is here.  The G80 is featured in this month's Top Gear magazine - it gets 7 out of 10.

Genesis is the upmarket Hyundai brand.

Like Acura is Honda's, Lexus is Toyota's and Infiniti is Nissan's.

Acura never came to the UK, Lexus is very successful while Infiniti tried but gave up last year.  If they had hung on a bit longer, they could have revelled in Ash Sutton's astonishing success in the BTCC in one of their cars - and maybe sold a few more.

Car+Driver have a story about the new all-electric Genesis GV60 coming to America:

It has a fancy gear-knob described as, "an illuminated 'crystal sphere'"

Being a Korean company selling to America, they won't realise that that choice of car colour makes it look like a Citroen Cactus:

That's All.

I Asked Google for a picture of Christopher Lloyd with a Taxi

But there weren't any decent ones - despite him being a star of the brilliant series Taxi.

Here's one of him from around that time:

In this photo, I think he looks like that bloke who plays Nick in New Girl who was also in Jurassic World.  If they ever do a Back To The Future where they go back to when Doc Brown was about thirty, then that's the guy to play him.

Talking of Back To The Future, here's a picture of Michael J.Fox with a taxi.

Also talking of Back To The Future, have you noticed the date?  It's October 15th, 2015.

Which is nearly October 21st, 2015.

Which is the date that Marty & Doc travelled to in Back To The Future II.

Here's a taster for a video that Toyota will be releasing on that date next week:

And remember, Toyota's posh arm, Lexus, have been working on a Hoverboard:

Unfortunately, it uses Maglev technology so we won't be seeing it on the streets of October 2015.

Meanwhile, Toyota's own view of the future doesn't look brilliant for us petrolheads.  Not if you only read the headlines anyway:

TOYOTA AIMS TO PHASE OUT REGULAR GASOLINE VEHICLES BY 2050 

TOYOTA AIMS TO NEARLY ELIMINATE GASOLINE CARS BY 2050

TOYOTA: CONVENTIONAL ENGINES WILL BE GONE BY 2050

Although if you click on the links (these are just 3 of plenty) you will see that they want to concentrate on hydrogen and hybrids so there will still be some gas being burned in the hybrids at least.

And they do all state that electric cars are not a big part of their plans.

So I guess the guys at Investor's Business Daily just went by the headlines.

If only there was some way of travelling forward to 2050 to find out...