Ten Things We Learned This Week: 12 May 2017 edition

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook billionaire and founder, is on tour. He calls it his ‘Personal Year of Travel Challenge'. Well, it’s something more interesting for his timeline than drunk selfies and liking other folks’ dinner, we suppose.

This week, Zuck turned his attention to the motor industry, and Motown in particular, getting stuck in on the Ford F-150 assembly line at the Dearborn factory. According to his Twitter (only joking), Mark said: “I played a very small part in assembling some new Ford F-150s on the line by adding antennas, cleats and drilling screws. I even signed the inspection sticker on one. You're welcome, future F-150 owner.”

Yes, the man used to warp factor performance from his spaceship and controlling superhumans as Professor Charles Xavier is going to have a crack at motorsport. Actor Sir Patrick Stewart has this week successfully attained his MSA racing license, clearing him to take part in the Silverstone Classic celebrity race in an Austin A35. 

Stewart said: “Speed is not a particularly big passion of mine. But when you are behind the wheel of a nice car it’s quite exhilarating to open it up, and I am looking forward to the Classic race meeting very much. Everybody has got a little bit of competitiveness and aggression about them, so it will certainly be entertaining!” And if you didn’t read that in his inimitable baritone of a voice, go back and start again immediately.

Does the name Ken Kiyoyuki Okuyama ring a bell? It should: he designed the likes of the Ferrari Enzo and 599 GTB, and presumably when he was feeling a bit off-colour, the Mitsubishi Colt CZC. Mmm, boxy.

Anyway, Ken is now busying himself designing very posh trains for luxury travel across Japan. Tickets for the futuristic express start at £2,220, and just like Ken’s limited edition cars were back in the day, they’re all sold out for a year.

VW recently put an updated seven-speed DSG transmission in the Golf. Amazingly, in 2017, seven gears is not a lot. The likes of Mercedes and Jeep both offer nine-speed autos. Ford's put a ten-speed in the new Mustang. So it's no surprise that engineering-obsessed Germans felt the need to chase after Ford, and were hard at work on a new VW ten-speed DSG.

What is surprising is that they've admitted defeat and canned the project. The car with the prototype gearbox has been crushed. Why? Apparently cost, complexity (duh), and the switch to electric motors, which don't need multi-gear transmissions. 

Last year, TG.com drove the incredibly boxy, not very incredibly engineered Mahindra e2o electric car. Risen from the ashes of the horrid G-Wiz, it was intended to be a new budget electric city car that could spawn an entire family of EVs that are cheap to buy and own for normal urban folk.

Well, after 13 months on sale, Mahindra has bottled the idea, stopped sales and offered to buy back all examples sold. Which probably won't take that long, we presume. Wonder why it didn't succeed...

And not because they’ve neglected their gym membership for another month while eating another bag of pork scratchings.

Nope, crash test dummies are catching up with the people they represent. Which makes the fact they’re gaining ages and weight something of a sad and troubling reflection of our own existence.

American company Humanetics has added some new ‘models’ to its range, namely a female in her 70s with a BMI of 29, and a middle-aged man with a BMI of 35. For reference, your BMI – body mass index, to the uninitiated – is worked out between your height and weight, and ideally lives somewhere between 18 and 25. If it’s over 30, you’re obese.

Studies show obese people are less likely to survive an accident, largely because safety features are less effective on them. Which probably explains why these new dummies are being recruited…

Good news! You can buy a Murcielago for the price of a Ford Fiesta. Bad news! It’s been considerably more on fire than the average new Fiesta has been.

Yep, if you’re good with cars and know your way around a socket set, the allure of a cheap, damaged supercar is high. But it’ll have to be one almighty socket set to fix this Lamborghini Murcielago LP640, listed on eBay in the US with a Buy it Now price of $16,850, or around £13,000. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it’s listed as ‘frame only’.

 “AS YOU CAN SEE IT IS BURNED AND DAMAGED,” shouts the inexplicably caps-heavy item description, written by seller ‘lamborghinidismantler’. Wonder how they came up with that?

Double your budget and you can step up from the burnt carcass of a Lambo to an actual, functional, not-at-all-on-fire NASCAR. Easy choice, surely.

This Red Bull-liveried Toyota Camry NASCAR is up for auction in America with a $30,000 to $35,000 estimate, which pegs it somewhere around £25,000 in English. A 2008 car, it never made a podium but has some modest race results on its CV and has spent its ‘retirement’ on the vintage racing scene.

Go on, you know you want to turn up and break your local trackday’s noise limits in the most childish way possible. Namely, a 700bhp V8 honed by oval racing…

Witness the time Top Gear hijacked an actual NASCAR

Think speed cameras and radar guns are a modern phenomenon? Well, they are. But the punishment of speeding? Nearly as old as the car itself…

Meet the Arnold Benz Motor Carriage, which in 1896, was pulled over by a cycling policeman when he saw it travelling at four times the speed limit. A heady 8mph, to you and I. Yup, the speed limit was a paltry 2mph, slow enough to allow all cars to have a mandatory flag-waver walking in front, announcing their arrival to oncomers.

Its driver, Walter Arnold, was fined a shilling, the equivalent of £6.10 nowadays. And rightly bloody so. The speed limit was lifted to 14mph a short time afterwards – Walter must have been kicking himself – an act which founded the London to Brighton run as a celebration.

Want to see his crazy, speed-demon of a motorcar? It’ll be at Hampton Court Palace in September.

Wonderful news for all-round hero Moss, who has returned home after a lengthy stay in hospital. Sir Stirling was admitted to hospital last December with a chest infection, and 134 days later he’s been allowed out to return home and recover further.

“We are delighted to be able to say that Sir Stirling is now at home. He is thrilled to be back where he belongs,” reads the great man’s website. He still has a substantial amount of recovery to undertake but says that he has determination and a great pit crew.

“He and Lady Moss are enormously grateful to the medical staff, both here and abroad, who worked so tirelessly to make all this possible,” the statement continues. “For now, they are looking forward to just lying back on their pillows in their bedroom and watching the Spanish Grand Prix.”

Good on them. All the best, Sir Stirling…