Ten things we learned this week: Friday March 3 edition

Another week, another peek at the Dodge Demon.

This time, Dodge is crowing about the specially toughened driveline parts that the Demon needs to handle the immense torque figure that it pumps out.

We’d love to be able to tell you how much that actually is, but Dodge is doing the whole ‘drip-feed info’ routine and we’ll just have to wait and speculate. Quite a strategy, then. 

As the cheesy video points out, the propshaft, diff and axles have all been beefed up to take the strain of whatever kind of wailing V8 banshee they’ve installed under the bonnet. So, are you still keen to see what transpires, or are you ready for Dodge to just let us all in on the big secret?

And it’s a bit of a looker.

Ian Callum, whose other claims to fame include the Ford RS200, Aston Martin DB9 and Jaguar F-Type, is the driving force behind why an electric SUV looks as attractive as it does. His back catalogue might be a bit of a giveaway, in hindsight.  

We asked him recently if he’d ever designed anything entirely new, that had never featured on a road car before, and he said – without missing a beat – that the I-Pace was it.

The concept will debut in Geneva in just a few days’ time, before the production version hits UK roads in 2018.

In case you needed a feel-good Friday story, try this one.

This is the Rolls-Royce SRH, and it has one very specific purpose – to make trips to the hospital better. And, as Rollers tend to do a job of making things better – commutes, transcontinental tours and so on – we think it’s just the ticket. 

Sick kids in West Sussex can now drive themselves through the halls of Saint Richard’s Hospital in a bespoke, one-off Rolls-Royce, on their way to surgery. 

It’ll do 10mph, thanks to a 24V electric setup, but can be limited to four miles per hour if you’d prefer to pootle around instead. And just look at it. This is the kind of thing that needs to catch on.

And by old-school, we mean full tweed. We’re talking things that only come in black and white, like magnetos, dynamos and distributors.

No, Ferrari’s not building any continuation models (as amazing as that’d be) – but its future mechanics will know what a down-draught carburettor is (and how it compares to a side-draught unit) thanks to new specialist training. They’ll also be able to sort out your valve timing using nothing more than a strobe light, some spanners and ingenuity, and explain why they have to do it at all.

Basically, Ferrari has recognised that no one under the age of fifty really cares about old-school engines, but that the market for restored classics has never been bigger. There will, inevitably, be a premium on anyone who can actually keep a 35-year-old mechanical fuel injection system running. 

So, are you of high-school age, and the kind of chap or chapette who likes the idea of maintaining a priceless collection of Ferraris? You might want to click here then.

*If you live in the UK, and you’re happy to ride an electric motorbike. 

The good news, if you fulfil both of those requirements, is that you can get up to £1,500 to go out and buy something like the Zero FXS (pictured). 

Coincidentally, that’s actually the first bike that’s been registered under the scheme, by a self-confessed ‘early adopter’ in Surrey. 

The FXS is a £10,500 supermoto with 44bhp and 78lb ft, which sounds like jolly good fun in the cut and thrust of city traffic. If that’s not enough to whet your appetite, there’s always the DSR, with 60bhp and 108lb ft for £15,700 – less, of course, your £1,500 bonus. 

Range is really a case of how big a battery you get (there are many choices), how hard you ride and how many pies you had for dinner, but there’s more than enough there for recharging to be a once or twice-weekly thing, if you spec it properly.

This is an E38 750iL from 1996, with a 5.4-litre V12. And that’s lovely. It’s the same kind of car that Pierce Brosnan drove around a carpark with his phone in Tomorrow Never Dies. And that was quite good as well. 

It’s also the last car that Mr Tupac Shakur ever rode in, before a hailstorm of bullets prematurely sent him to Gangsta’s Paradise. Yes, we know that’s Coolio. Let us have it. 

Yes, it’s a wee bit macabre to buy the car that one of the luminaries of west-coast rap lost his life in, but then again, people do tours of the Tower of London. 

That said, you could do about 43,500 tours of the Tower of London for the same kind of money as the 750iL’s asking price – that’s 1.5 million US dollars, if you’re curious, or about £1.22m.

So, let’s get to the bottom of this. As the standard 1 Series is rear-drive, we have to assume that this four-door saloon started life as either a Mini Countryman or a BMW 2 Series Active Tourer. It has the three and four-cylinder engines found in Minis as well. So it’s absolutely not a 1 Series, except for the fact that BMW has called it the 1 Series. And that, we guess, actually makes it a 1 Series. 

It’s a specific creation for the Chinese market, where things like rear-drive dynamics and straight-six engines tend to take a back seat to, well, actually sitting in the back seat. That’s why there are stretched versions of cars like the Audi A4 (A4L) and BMW X1 (X1 Li), as well as saloon versions of the Peugeot 308.

Remember the £1.7m Centenario? Well, the first one has just found its way into the hands of a happy customer. We’re assuming the ‘happy’ part, but with a dry-sumped, 760bhp V12 and zero to 186 miles an hour in 23.5 seconds, it’s not the biggest leap we’ve ever taken. 

A collector (read: lucky so and so) from the United Arab Emirates is the first to put number plates on a Centenario but, with any luck, we’ll actually see them on the roads. You know, if we wish really hard. 

… And no, it wasn’t reading the wrong name out.

Michael J Fox arriving at the Oscars in a DeLorean? Now we’re talking. And let’s not forget that Seth Rogen was wearing a set of self-lacing Nike high-tops, which are the only shoes worth talking about. 

In the vid, there’s weird Hollywood-type banter and a lot of A-listers being Hollywood nice, but come on – DeLorean. MJF. High-tops.