New car news

14 June 2011 - 16:00

Island of Man record smashed

The Isle of Man is possibly the last refuge of lunatics on the planet. Well, Our Jeremy has a holiday house there, for starters. It;s also home to a little thing call the TT, where motorbicyclists fling themselves at terrifying velocity around the tiny Welsh island in the pursuit of trophies, glory and hopefully not dying in the process.

See pics of the record-breaking STI here

As a sponsor of this year's event, Subaru lent British rally champion Mark Higgins an almost-stock standard Impreza STi sedan and told him to have a bit of a go around the island. He duly set an astonishing pace around the 59km-long tight, twisty, unforgiving course, averaging 181.8km/h for the entire thing.

What's more notable, though, is a slight 'incident' on one of his practice laps. and when we say 'incident', we'd suggest that Higgins and his passenger Chris Cantle now have removed a couple of years from the end of their lives...