100 things we learned in 2015

Regular readers will be well aware of our penchant for a pun. Especially a poor, badly delivered one. Yet we were left befuddled by this in 2015, the Smart Forrail.

If you’re waiting for us to guffaw “corners like it’s on rails!” or suchlike, then we’re afraid Smart got there first, as that was the running theme of a press release announcing the six-month project that saw a Forfour switched onto 22in wheels and its steering disconnected so that it could pretend it’s a little train.

“Despite challenging engineering obstacles,” the bumf read, “the experiment steadfastly refused to come off the rails.” Boom boom.

The line ought to be familiar: “A Formula 1 car has so much grip, you could drive it upside down”.

It screams urban myth, but back in July McLaren told us that it is, in fact, possible. The caveat? You must drive at 200mph for a minimum of 1.6 miles for successful ceiling-stickiness.

For McLaren-Honda’s 2015 car, that’s quite a big ask.

So they should be, given they’re designed for short competition stages as opposed to service interval longevity. But still, this was an impressive display back in the summer, as a dim-witted tractor driver came within inches of wreaking havoc.

Luckily, both Thierry Neuville’s brakes and reactions were sharp. As, we imagine, was his temper as this video comes to a close…

News about Uber that doesn’t centre around mass inner-city protests proved to be rare in 2015, but here's some: the controversial ride-hailing company is looking at a self-driving future.

CEO Travis Kalanick was quoted in July as saying he’d happily buy up the 500,000 self-driving cars that similarly pioneering company Tesla plans to build in the next five years.

Given regular cabbies are so perturbed at potentially being put out of business by driven cars, lord only knows what form protesting will take if autonomous cars threaten their livelihood…

Weirder news from the heart of England, or the area around Vauxhall’s Luton plant, anyhow. BBC Crimewatch reported numerous thefts of Corsa and Astra body parts in the area, with up to 10 reports each week of stripped body panels back in the summer. Most frequently it was bumpers being nicked, but in 150 cases enough of the car went walkabout to make repair unviable.

Why? Well, short of apprehended culprits, there’s no firm answer, but the high brand loyalty in the area means that there’s big demand for spare parts, and those being nicked are the ones typically called upon after car accidents.

We’ve clearly underestimated the Corsa’s desirability…

Back in July, a number of stats surrounding road rage emerged.

Proving how much we dislike our weekends coming to a close, 7.30am on a Monday is the time you’re most likely to encounter anger on the roads. Though conversely, you’re apparently most likely to receive flak from 69-year-old men.

Typically, 46 per cent of Brits experience road rage regularly. Live in Lincoln, though, and the figure climbs to 61 per cent, making it (don daytime telly outrage voice) the ROAD RAGE CAPITAL OF THE UK.

The link to cars is perhaps tenuous here, but it is seated transport and it does look like rather a lot of fun. And we approve of that.

Canadian Daniel Boria, clearly more than a little enamoured by Pixar flick Up, attached 150 helium balloons to a chair and went for a somewhat precarious trip over Calgary. He was papped by Twitter user Tom Warne.

While he described it as “the most fun thing” he’d ever done, his business partner was less jovial, saying “the stunt wasn’t responsible”. Given that Boria spent over $12,000 on helium and was forced to parachute from the chair mid-journey, the man may have a point.

And, if we're being honest, there's not an awful lot more to add to this picture.

But then we imagine a lot of these words are falling on glazed eyes. Nonetheless, we'll soldier on.

Maria Sharapova, a celebrity of the tennis world for a number of reasons, is a Porsche ambassador. So ahead of the summer's Wimbledon championship, she popped into Porsche Mayfair to plonk herself in the Boxster Spyder, essentially a roofless Cayman GT4.

Want more info? Then here's the entirely unbiased opinion of Sharapova herself.

"This is huge fun - truly thrilling. I love that this new Boxster Spyder is like a classic sports car, but at the same time feels so modern and sophisticated. It's a fantastic car and I need to get one!"

Impartial.

Some of this year's least revelatory news came from the murky world of YouTube, where this video surfaced of Ferrari’s two most recent V12 grand tourers having a jolly good scrap on the drag strip.

It’s a battle between 730bhp F12 Berlinetta and 661bhp 599 GTO. You may have a hunch which way it’s going to swing, and while we won’t reveal the result, we will spoil any possible (albeit unlikely) surprise at just how flipping good this race sounds.

It’s a headphones on job, this one…

Coupe-hatchback? Done. Diesel performance SUV? Tick. Moon buggy? Sorted.

Audi’s pursuit of making every type of four-wheeled thing imaginable remains on full course, if these pictures are to be believed.

Ingolstadt's engineers teamed up with a bunch of scientists in 2015. The plan? To send an unmanned rover to the moon, the buggy leaving Earth in 2017 to travel the 236,121 miles that will take it to Apollo 17’s original landing spot.

Audi was called upon for its knowhow in four-wheel drive and piloted driving, among other things, with the team it’s assisting – a German bunch called ‘Part-Time Scientists’ – aiming to acquire the £20million ‘Google Lunar XPRIZE’ for exploring a chunk of moonscape and sending some pictures back to prove it.

Given the rough terrain the Lunar Audi is set to face, we’re hoping our Part-Time friends haven’t specced S-Line suspension.

2015 saw the arrival of the Vuhl 05, a trackday toy that sells for just shy of £60,000. That’s a staggering £23,000 more than one British gentleman paid for this, an actual Formula 1 car raced by Rubens Barrichello in 2007.

He describes it as “the worst performing Honda F1 ever,” likely prompting protestations from Jenson Button and Fernando Alonso, but added that it’s more than adequate as a loopy track toy.

Its bargain price is perhaps explained by its lack of engine, with its owner seeking a 500bhp V8 to get him and his girlfriend used to the chassis (presumably not at the same time) before a 750bhp upgrade.

If he does succeed in getting his hands on a reliable, 750bhp Honda engine, we suspect McLaren might like to know where from...

Or so said Roberto Giolito. Fiat’s Head of Design told TG back in the summer that Dante Giacosa – the man behind the original 500 from the fifties – would favour the bloated brother of its modern-day successor.

“The guy was dreaming of a car with a very efficient greenhouse and cockpit, instead of creating a car with a certain design,” Giolito told TG.

“I guess in the 500 family the L would be the preferred one for Mr Giacosa, because of the efficiency, the visibilities. The car has basically no obstruction, because any pillar was dimensionally at the minimum thickness.”

We still think it’s fugly.

Not if VW has its way, anyhow, for this video shows us the future of plonking your car in front of things when you don’t want to park it yourself. Simply hop out, and the spookily intelligent car will trot off and find a space itself, seeking out a charging point if it’s electrically powered and needing juice.

It’s all with the aim of making our lives easier and giving us more of that valuable 'free-time' stuff. In the case of valet parkers, they look set to gain a lot more free time.

It’s difficult to put this politely, but we shall endeavour to. The basics, then: a British lady was spotted rear-ending a fish van in her Mini this week. The apparent cause of her attention-lapse?

She was having, um, an enjoyable moment to herself. The van’s rear-view camera recorded the aftermath of the prang, its footage showing her holding a toy – the type of which you don't typically give at Christmas – while adjusting her trousers.

Many puns are possible, but none shall be as subtly classy than that of M&J Seafood, owner of the van involved. "The matter is in the hands of our insurers."

Back when the G Wiz first entered our lives, electric cars were synonymous with misery and being very scared of crashing.

Now, we live in brighter, BMW i and Tesla filled times, where electric cars can be faster and more fun than the petrol cars they rival. Sometimes.

This, though, is the e2o, made by Mahindra Reva, the same people who brought us the G Wiz and the associated negative PR hurdle successfully jumped by the i3 and Model S. It comes with a heady 25bhp and quite a bit more styling than last time around. These things are relative.

Lewis had an excellent sporting moment in 2015. Um, winning the F1 title.

But he also dropped a mild clanger, missing the mens' final at Wimbledon back in July, having boasted via Instagram of his posh seats beforehand.

Turns out that was a hasty and optimistic move, however, for Lew’s attire, or more specifically his lack of jacket and tie, got him turned away from the Royal Box for British tennis's yearly highlight.

Rather than nip off to buy what was needed to comply, though, we got another, moodily shadowed Instagram picture. It seems Hammo couldn’t bear a Sunday afternoon of sport without him in the headlines. #dressed

Following the fully excellent brick Ferrari F40 came this, the Lego Mercedes Arocs.

It’s a bit more complex than the Fezza, with suspension, steering and lift systems to construct – as well as that massive grabber – via 2793 pieces.

Described as one of Lego Technic’s most complex kits, it measures 31cm high and 54cm long when complete.

If you got this or the F40 for Christmas, consider us jealous.

If you can afford a £1 million car – more specifically, the Bugatti Veyron – you can afford a £6 million villa. That’s the probably quite sound reasoning of Damac, a Dubai-based property developer.

And if you’re particularly smitten with said car, surely it ought to be the centrepiece of that villa? Meet the Ettore 971 Villa, complete with seven bedrooms, glass ceilings (the literal, not metaphorical sort) and furniture inspired by the 1000bhp supercar.

There are several for sale, all designed so you can pop your car inside and see it from around your pricey home. And should you ever get bored of doing that, the Veyron villas live on a site that also includes an entertainment strip, a rainforest and a golf course designed by Tiger Woods. Really.

If you got one of these for Chistmas, then we're really jealous.

We can normally rely on Russia for excellent car news, and 2015 served up plenty of oddities. Like this one: two five-year-old toddlers dug their way out of nursery in an attempt to go and buy a sports car.

Yup. With spades nicked from the sand pit, the Komsomolskaya Pravda Daily reports, they dug holes under the playground’s fence, using them to make haste to the local car dealer to buy a Jaguar sports car.

They did so, perhaps predictably, without the requisite money to complete the purchase. But their dignity was saved by a concerned passer-by who swept them up mid-journey and took them back to their concerned teachers.

Good effort though, lads.

For humans concerned with the future of humanity, development of the robot is a true rollercoaster ride, veering dramatically between ‘exciting’ and ‘really bloody scary’ with abandon.

We’ve not yet made our minds up on where this video lies. It proves a robot can ride a bicycle. On the surface of it, that may sound quite easy to do when robots can walk, dance and construct goods in factories.

But riding a bike? It’s a balancing act, one with more unpredictable variables to account for. Watch this video closely and you’ll observe very natural, nigh-on human stature and reactions.

Scary. We’re going with scary.

Staying with eerie visions of the future, here’s the latest product from JLR’s slightly intimidating tech lair.

It is, ladies and gents, the see-through trailer. If you’re thinking that will make it hard to load your precious possessions aboard, fear not: it’s visible from the outside.

Nope, it’s from inside the car that it disappears from view, making parking much less intimidating and multi-lane roads easier to manage. And if it’s a horsebox you’re towing, then cameras inside can live-feed into the car, alerting you to any unexpected antics from your mint-crunching chum.

Hashtag First World Problems, and all that.

TG loves dogs. Regular readers ought to know that.

So we therefore love Skoda, for wanting to keep them safe. Its ‘Dog Safety Belt’ latches on to an existing seatbelt, and can even be used as a lead. It’s available in sizes ranging from small to extra large, so even the most obtusely shaped dogs are catered for.

Yes, this is real, and yes, it’s brilliant.

Quite what the Floridian gentleman caught nutting a bus in this security footage was hoping to achieve, TG cannot say. All we know is this: in a head-to-head contest, bus will always come off better than human.

Florida police say the hapless commuter alighted from the bus, only to change his mind and get back on board. The driver asked him to pay another $2, at which point he rather lost the plot.

Cue the first recorded instance of the masochistic sport of bus-butting. Ten Things’ favourite detail? The gent on the bench to the left of shot, masterfully achieving the dictionary definition of ‘impassive’. 

Watch the video here

So say the dedicated wheel-shufflers at the Institute of Advanced Motorists. Nine per cent of the 500 drivers it surveyed admitted to snapping a selfie behind the wheel in the last month. The biggest offenders were 19-25 year olds – nearly a fifth admitting to drive-selfie-ing – and more than twice as many men confessed than women.

Handily, the IAM’s head of driving standards recapped the basic principles of sight for the Independent. “If you're busy taking a selfie, you're looking at where the camera is, you're looking at what the image might be. That means you're not looking where you're going,” he said. Noted.

Welcome to Chapter Seven of ‘Sports You Never Knew Existed But Are Very Glad Do’.

Motorcycle limbo, as you may have guessed, is like normal limbo, only with added speed and danger, which is exactly what it’s been missing all these years.

Click here to watch the good people of Norfolk demonstrate…

Spain's Ciudad Real Airport cost more than €1billion to build. But a consortium of Chinese investors has just bought it for the grand sum of just €10,000 (around £7,000). That’s some last-gen-Maybach-level depreciation, right there.

The Chinese may yet be ousted from the deal if someone puts in a higher bid, but whatever happens, that’s still an international airport with one of Europe’s longest runways for less than a parking space anywhere remotely useful.

And yes, Ciudad Real was the very airport at which Top Gear thrashed a trio of super-cabrios back in Series 20…

In the run-up to the launch of the Bentayga, Bentley’s first SUV, Crewe bosses proclaimed – perhaps with tongue wedged in cheek – that they wanted to solve the headache for all those ‘who wanted to spend more than £150,000 on a 4x4’.

Who might that be? Well at September's Frankfurt motor show, Bentley CEO Wolfgang Durheimer announced that recipient of Bentayga #1 would be… Her Majesty. Queen Elizabeth II.

“We have reserved car number one for her,” Durheimer proudly told the Telegraph.

Of course, that doesn’t mean the Queen took Bentley up on the reservation. But even at a healthy £160,100 starting price – rising past £200,000 if you get ticky with the options – we suspect Her Maj’ was able to foot the bill.

If you own a pair of pooches, you might be looking at a Subaru Outback or something similarly workhorse-like to cart them around in.

Well, stop! Save your pennies and instead buy a Smart. Yep, the littlest city car maker has made its Forfour model a haven for hounds, with something called ‘readyspace seats’.

The entry point can be lowered by 12cm for smaller dogs to hop in, while there’s a dog crate for safe transport (it’s comfier than it sounds), protecting your mutt from hard braking and the like.

It’s not in lieu of existing puppy safety, of course, which the Germans are only too keen to point out: “Please still make sure that your dog always wears a seat belt.” Quite.

Given Audi’s penchant for niche-busting, no mash-up of body styles should come as a surprise. And yet this Audi A3 limo convertible has those of us with beards furiously scratching them.

It is, as you might expect, a coachbuilt special. The list of reasons as to why this six-door, eight-seat cabrio isn’t a production car could likely fill rest of the website, but we’re pegging ‘intensely complex roof mechanism’ and ‘lack of chassis rigidity’ right up there.

Still, if there’s a hen do seeking al fresco champagne glugging, there is little to rival it…

The 1995 Hungarian Grand Prix witnessed arguably the most absurd incident in F1’s long and glorious history of absurd incidents, and the crowning moment of Taki Inoue’s short race career.

If you need reminding, here’s how it went. The hapless Japanese racer’s Footwork engine caught fire midway through the race, so Taki stopped at the side of the track, gesturing at the fire marshalls to dash over and extinguish his car. With the dawdling marshalls struggling to grasp the urgency of the situation, Inoue jumped from his car and legged it to the barriers, seizing an extinguisher.

But as he turned back to his Footwork, Taki failed to spot the safety car careering over the grass at him. It clattered into the back of his legs. Taki was thrown over the bonnet before tottering back to his feet, still gamely clinging to the extinguisher.

Painful? No doubt. Funny? Unquestionably. As 2015 marked the 20th anniversary of Taki’s tumble, hit these words to read about the time we met the man himself for a quiet pint. Or six…

Above is Hitchbot. He wanted to travel the breadth of America by hitchhiking his way around – with a 16-point bucket list to tick off – as part of a Canadian study into human-robot interaction. His cheery little LED face reassured drivers that he only had friendly intentions.

Which is more than can be said for those drivers. He may have ticked Times Square off, but Hitchbot's journey got little further: in Philadelphia, the poor chap was beaten up and destroyed by someone TG now dislikes thoroughly.

“Hitchbot’s family is asking everyone to show their love by sharing circuit-warming stories about the hitchhiking robot,” reads his website. “Stay tuned about Hitchbot’s future plans.”

So post-surgery, he’ll be back. But he’ll return to a world darker and less welcoming than the one he first entered.

…and many of his possessions then stolen. Being rich and On Telly is a good advert for the shiny, lovely things you own, things that less salubrious people may wish to purloin from you. Usually, though, high security measures ward off such activity.

Thieves in France, however, were suspected to have used drastic measures as Jenson holidayed in Saint Tropez. By, erm, pumping gas through his villa’s air conditioning system to ensure he slept soundly through the burglary.

The gassing was unconfirmed, but perhaps not as far-fetched as it sounds: previous summers have yielded reports of similar robberies in France, particularly from holidaymakers in campervans.

Yup, though perhaps not now. After Mr Cent's infamous bankruptcy, the Japanese oddity was among the items being sold off to fund his return to financial stability.

Chances are he owned it after his sort-of-appearance in this superbowl advert for the Kizashi.

We, though, like to think old Fiddy has a penchant for extraordinarily niche cars only available with four-wheel drive, a petrol engine and a CVT gearbox. And that his Subaru Levorg escaped the attention of his accountant…

Wayne and D’Ann Rauh from Texas like Vipers. Not the bitey snake kind, but the comically-engined automotive kind. In fact, they like them so much, they have amassed a whopping 79 Dodge Vipers in a very unique collection.

Yep, Vipers number 78 and 79 were added to their collection – dubbed, unsurprisingly, the ‘Viper’s Nest’ – back in the summer.

Well done, Wayne and D’Ann Rauh from Texas. Though if you really want to be unique, how about a collection of 79 Dacia Dusters?

A man named Reliford Cooper was arrested by Florida police on drink-driving charges in October. When eventually apprehended, Cooper blamed it on his dog.

Mr Cooper’s car was spotted running a red light, after which a Manatee County deputy tried to pull him over. Cooper drove into a ditch attempting to escape, ran into a nearby house and then tried to flee on foot.

When finally arrested, he said: “My dog was driving that car”. Cooper was later arrested and charged with DUI (driving under influence). The villainous pooch was nowhere to be found. Clearly the coppers were barking up the wrong tree.

Proof that age is just a number comes in the shape of 95-year old Laura Thomas from Pembroke Dock, west Wales, who is believed to be the UK’s oldest driving instructor.

Which means she’s been dishing out driving wisdom since 1938. And in that time, she’s never once used a ‘dual-control’ car, nor has she ever had an accident.

“I gave a man lessons the other day,” she told the BBC, “and he was what I’d call… thick.” You tell ‘em, Laura.

Via BBC news

Human ingenuity knows no bounds, and here is the evidence: a picture of a Mexican man hoping to cross the border into America undetected by sewing himself into a car seat.

The great disguise actually happened way back in 2001, but only emerged in 2015 as the US Border Control released images of some of its more bizarre finds. Stowaways have been found in engine bays and cavities cut into car floorpans, but the half-man-half-seat transformer stands out as particularly well thought out.

Not well enough, though, as Enrique Aguilar Canchol was discovered beneath the upholstery at the San Ysidro crossing in California, and presumably throne straight out.

Sorry.

Yep, more dogs. Earlier this year, we learned of a big-hearted man in Texas who takes a whole kennel of stray dogs (yep, that is the collective noun) around the local town in his specially built road-train. An online pledge page has been set up to help fund his generous endeavours.

Just look at their happy little faces. And you’ll have one too if you watch this video. It’s a joyous thing to see, and it’s also fair to say his pooches are very well trained.

Sorry. Again.

Um, yeah. Nissan shed some light on how extensive the development of its crossovers is, and some of the details proved very odd indeed.

How about 480 hours of windscreen wiper testing? Over two million clicks of each indicator? And dropping the weight of a brown bear onto the roofs of its cars to check they’ll survive such an impact?

The oddest fact of all, though, emerges from the sound system testing. Over 1.7million minutes of music are played to test the durability of its speakers, with German house music used to check the bass and Mariah Carey for the high notes.

Lots of people are scared of spiders. And many of them irrationally so, refusing to enter rooms until an entirely harmless little arachnid has been pacified and forcibly removed.

Some way north of that level of hysteria lurks the man so petrified of a little eight-legged beastie that he decided to throw a lit cigarette lighter at one. While filling up with petrol. The clip is here.

We’ve no doubt, as spider-extinguishing goes, this is quite a successful idea. But it’s also rather effective for extinguishing cars and fuel stations, too.

If only he’d been able to find an old lady who’d recently ingested a fly.

Much like Toyota’s recall woes of yore, the public really latched onto the Volkswagen emissions scandal, and this ramshackle fancy dress costume was one of the more eye-boggling reactions.

You might be relieved to know it’s not a complete costume to buy, rather an idea by HalloweenCostumes.co.uk back in October for those who wanted, in their words, “to be the ‘Oh, I get it’ Halloween 2015 partygoer that starts conversations.”

Those conversations probably didn't lead to lasting friendships.

You’d think Horacio Pagani, the man behind the Zonda and Huayra, would have crafted his own perfect supercar with the wealth of tech and carbon he has at his disposal.

But reports in October suggested he'd bought himself a Porsche 918 Spyder. Naturally he went for the track-biased Weissach Package, too.

The more cynical might assume he’s going to deconstruct it, perhaps to analyse its trick hybrid system to inspire something similar in a future Pagani.

Truth is, though, he’s simply a car nut, for the 918 seems likely to join an illustrious collection that also includes a Carrera GT and a Ford GT.

Bravo, Horacio.

Birds may typically be the arch enemy of cars, their paintwork in particular, but this is evidence the two can get along on in perfect harmony.

However you’re feeling, it’s a video that can’t fail to raise a smile. But however much it amuses you, consider this: you’re not enjoying it half as much as the crow.

Tragic news! Back in the autumn, some thieving gits pilfered the greatest RS6 to ever grace the planet – skier Jon Olsson’s amazing wide-arch snow-weapon – and decided to torch it.

The car, admittedly already sold by Olsson, was being used on a photoshoot in the Netherlands when some gun-toting itchy-fingered crims took a liking to it. So much so, they decided to nab it.

But instead of abandoning the car when they stopped joyriding, the tea-leafs decided to set the super-wide-body RS6 ablaze.

All the hours of effort, ingenuity and hardcore hardware – including the two blingy 18-karat gold turbochargers that massaged the 4.0-litre V8 from 552bhp to a staggering 950-plus bhp – went up in smoke.

Being an optimistic and humble chap, Jon Olsson didn’t respond to the incident with hate-fuelled rage and anger, simply stating: "I am more motivated than ever to follow this build up with something just as good!"

We can’t wait to see what he comes up with. But until then, the epic RS6 has gone to the great graveyard in the sky. RIP.

Shortly after 'Dieselgate' broke, none other than Leonardo DiCaprio was rumoured to be eyeing up production of a film about Volkswagen’s emissions scandal.

Yep, the Titanic star’s production company apparently bought the rights to an as-yet-unwritten book about VW’s current woes – in which the German firm embedded software in millions of diesel cars to ‘cheat’ emissions regulations – for a future film.

At such an early stage, details are scarce to nonexistent. We don’t even know if DiCap himself will star. But in the interests of entertainment, we would like to offer some suggestions for a title.

‘The TDi-Parted’
‘The Great Gasby’
‘The A-V8-or’
‘Catch Me (and my team of engineers) If You Can’

Rolls knows how to do opulence. This is undisputed.

Yet it’s nice to have it reinforced every once in a while, and how better to do that than a wood and leather cocktail hamper?

Or, to be more specific, an American Walnut Wood and Natural Grain Leather cocktail hamper? One which takes eight weeks to make?

“On opening, an automatic integrated light illuminates the Hamper in a warm glow, in turn reflecting from the mirrored surfaces to evoke the aesthetic of a luxurious cocktail bar,” says the bumf.

“Should the user wish to present their guests with canapés, two dishes find their place in the lower portion of the Hamper, either side of an ice bucket, whilst discreet drawers hold recipe cards and fine cotton napkins.”

Adding a lemon alcopop to lager, thus creating a Turbo Shandy, constitutes sophisticated cocktailing in the TG office. So we fear Rolls’s efforts are beyond us, particularly as its boozy hamper costs over £26,000. Y’know, like a Golf GTI does…

Here in the UK, flinging a bit of rubbish out of your car’s window is punishable by a modest fine. In the Russia, the repercussions can be altogether less pleasant.

This video shows us two things: that chest cams can be as illuminating and entertaining as dash cams, and that being a litter bug in Russia is frowned upon by at least one determined motorcyclist.

Alleviate your car of trash through its window and you could find it coming back to you, in a form far messier for your lap. You have been warned…

A word of warning should you share a car with your partner: forget who has been driving it and it could cost you over two grand.

At least it did for Kirk and Beverly Shenton, when their Lamborghini Gallardo was snapped at 35mph in a 30mph zone along Rhos-on-Sea promenade in North Wales.

The couple claimed not to remember who was behind the wheel – they’d swapped after Mr Shenton had a pint – and were both taken to court and charged for failing to identify the driver at the time of the offence. Each had six points added to their licence, and in total their fines topped £2,400.

"The documents from the police clearly state you have to be 100 per cent certain before naming the driver and we couldn’t be sure who was driving. The picture is too dark and grainy and we didn’t want to lie,” said Kirk to Mail Online. “We tried to stay within the law and we’ve been persecuted for it.”

The couple had been in North Wales to view a castle they wanted to buy. We understand if you're not feeling sympathetic.

“I think I would make a very good James Bond villain,” hollers wee Felipe, as he drives the Jaguar C-X75 stunt car from Spectre.

Problem is, it’s quite hard to take him seriously when he’s a) belting out an appalling rendition of the James Bond signature music and b) looking like a child joyriding his dad’s car.

Massa looks rather adept at smoking around in the big Jag, though, and we’ve no doubt he’d make a solid stunt driver. But a scary baddie?

Felipe, Fernando is scarier than you.

Feeling flush? You can hire a Lambo Aventador SV in which to tour Monaco. Rather than being from the posh row in the Hertz car park, though, it’s an option from a company called AAA, which specialises in hire cars that aren’t Kia Picantos or Fiat Bravos.

The SV is one of its more exciting options, the list also including Ferrari F12s, BMW i8s and even a gaggle of Mansory products. You’ll need at least £1,000 a day to secure something properly special, though, that SV approaching £3,000…

So says a survey, anyway. And no, it wasn’t just the TG office that was polled.

A company called Wunelli studied nearly 9,000 journeys carried out over a three-year period, concluding that speed cameras are creating ‘braking blackspots’.

You’ve probably been there: a speed camera appears in view and you instinctively prod the brake pedal.

If you’re nodding along, you are far from alone. Wunelli reckons ‘hard braking activity’ increases by a curiously precise average of 689 per cent in the area around fixed speed cameras, with one camera on the eastbound M4 near Brentford seeing a 1,140 per cent increasing in panicked pedal stabs.

The survey was further reaching than that, with a number of less than shocking conclusions also being unearthed: people speed more in the early hours of the morning than rush hour, and speeding is more frequent in the empty Scottish highlands than gridlocked central London.

Our jaws remain undropped.

News of the things-you-might-prefer-not-hear-from-the-latest-F1-champion variety now, as Lewis Hamilton – Britain’s first back-to-back winner of Formula 1 trophies – has declared cars aren’t his big interest. Oh.

Speaking to Radio 4’s Today programme in October – very high-brow – Lewis revealed he’s been teaching himself to play piano in his spare time, before declaring “music is really my favourite thing.” Yep.

“Above cars, music is what I love doing most,” F1’s current car racing champion said.

“I really feel like music is the key to the soul,” Lewis, pictured above with fellow pianist Elton John, continued.

Your thoughts?

Volvo, you’re likely aware, loves safety. It has been pioneering side impact-this and airbag-that for years now. It’s even targeted no deaths or serious injuries in its cars from 2020.

It’s not just people who need protecting of course; kangaroos do, too. We’re not just being obtuse: it’s reported that over 20,000 ‘roos are struck in Australia every year.

The lively marsupials have a habit of jumping wantonly in front of fast approaching vehicles, their drivers given lows odds of dodging them given they’ve likely seen no signs of life for the last 200 miles.

So Volvo is using a bunch of XC90s to develop kangaroo avoidance technology. Really. Cameras and radars will aim to detect hopping, pouched animals, and automatically apply the brakes if needed.

Martin Magnusson, Volvo’s Senior Safety Engineer, said this: “In Sweden we have done research involving larger, slower moving animals like moose, reindeer and cows which are a serious threat on our roads.

“Kangaroos are smaller than these animals and their behaviour is more erratic. This is why it’s important that we test and calibrate our technology on real kangaroos in their natural environment.”

“Males dressed as traffic cones, blocking the road like traffic cones.” It’s an obscure but utterly brilliant police report, filed back in autumn in Kingston, London.

It followed some Halloween japes, as a bunch of ‘lads’ – for they were drinking jovially on a Saturday night so we must refer to them as such – used the classic orange and white cone as the inspiration for their costume.

And if you’re dressed like a cone, why not act like one? That’s the alcohol-imbued logic they seemingly followed, blocking cars and buses in the road and taking photos of themselves playing entirely up to their outfits.

While Kingston Police expressed amusement at the prank – they’d been carrying sweets to distribute to trick or treaters, after all – they naturally rounded up the cones and got them to the side of the road as quickly as possible.

If only we could call them out to our local, oft-unattended road works…

Picture credit: @dtheochari

We’ve long wished for the many, many potholes that torture our suspension and bend our alloys to be fixed. What we hadn’t expected, though, is that this may be done by scarily intelligent drones.

The University of Leeds has received a £4.2million investment to research the possibility of road-fixing robots. As well as fixing our broken roads, they would also prevent the traffic jams that inevitably spin off the road works that result from actual, vulnerable people carrying out such tasks.

Professor Phil Purnell is from its School of Civil Engineering. “We want to make Leeds the first city in the world to have zero disruption from street works.

“We can support infrastructure which can be entirely maintained by robots and make the disruption caused by the constant digging up the road in our cities a thing of the past.”

We’ll allow you a moment to be freaked out.

Staying with freaky tech, Audi invested in some 3D printers this year, and made a car.

Rather than one of its identikit saloons, though, it chose something more glamorous to really warm our cockles. This, boys and girls, is the toy you really wanted for Christmas: a 1:2 scale 1936 Auto Union Type C racer.

“We are constantly exploring the boundaries of new processes’” says Prof. Dr. Hubert Waltl, Audi’s head of toolmaking. “One of our goals is to apply metal printers in series production.”

Naturally the car didn’t roll onto a printer tray intact; metal printing can currently craft objects up to 7.9-by-9.5 inches in size. But that covers many parts of a car, and the printer can handle steel or aluminium, crafting parts with a greater density than if they were made by more traditional methods.

How long before you buy your car online and print at home?

Uber has been ringing the death knell for traditional taxis for a little while now, be it intentional or not. And it can probably take some of the blame for the rather sad development that ‘The Knowledge’ will no longer be taught to London cabbies.

If your knowledge is lagging behind, it’s the training school where black cab drivers learn the 25,000 streets of London they must navigate to successfully get London’s commuters and tourists between destinations. If you’ve ever been taken on indescribably intricate rat-runs through London’s back streets at the behest of your driver, it’s The Knowledge you can thank.

The three-decade-old training school has seen demand plummet in the last few years, though, Uber – and its reliance on satnav – one of the reasons identified.

The inevitable march of technology, or a sad day for a British tradition?

Regular readers will know our love for animal-car stories is second to none, even if said animal happens to be stuffed and broadly fictional.

So we were squeaking in happy delight at reports from China that appeared to show the owner of a Lamborghini Gallardo being stopped by police for having a GIANT TEDDY strapped to his car’s roof.

The driver, it’s said, had bought the behemoth bear as a gift for his girlfriend. Chengdu’s traffic police, however, failed to see the romantic side, viewing the toy as a potential hazard to other road users. By which, presumably, they meant, “parents now being given a hard time by their toddlers for buying them such a very small teddy”.

Dangerous? Romantic? Clearly there’s only one way to settle this. Ask the bear. He looks happy enough, doesn’t he?

Actually, no. No he doesn’t. Untie the poor lad!

The machines are rising, and they shall show no mercy.

In November, American news channel CNN revealed the terrifying plight of Josh Hood, the manager of a car wash in Louisiana.

Hood was sluicing down his beloved facility when, the security video reveals, he and his hose were rudely grabbed by a vast rotating loofah contraption. The poor manager was sent spinning round and round, trussed up by his own hose and powerless to escape.

Eventually, the evil machine chose to drop Hood to the deck, leaving him with, in his own words, “just a little road rash on my knees.”

“It was scary,” admitted Hood. “I was in the military, and that was scarier that anything I’ve been through in the military.”

This is just the start, Josh. Fear the machines.

To watch CNN’s bizarre, breathless report on the fearsome incident, click this link.

To celebrate 45 years of Range Rover, Land Rover drove the latest version of its flagship SUV across a bridge constructed of nothing but paper.

No bolts, no glue, no cheeky brickwork hiding beneath the sheafs. Just paper and more paper, happily supporting the 2.2-tonne 4x4.

The stunt was intended, we think, to highlight the Rangey’s lightweight aluminium construction. We were more taken by the extraordinary power of paper, a material we had previously only thought suitable for the construction of tiny planes. And blotting.

Steve Messam, the artist behind the stunt, said: “Paper structures capable of supporting people have been built before but nothing on this scale has ever been attempted. It’s pushing engineering boundaries.”

TG wants answers. Why have engineers spent centuries, and countless billions, constructing bridges of metal and wood and brick… when they could have saved a whole lot of time and effort by wedging a few old copies of the Daily Star in the gap?

TG had long imagined Aussie police to be common-sense, salt-of-the-earth sorts, coppers who would chuckle approvingly at, say, the engineering ingenuity of the gents behind a pair of motorised picnic tables.

It would seem not.

Police in Western Australia reacted in po-faced fashion to CCTV footage of nine young men apparently trundling along the Perth beachfront on a pair of wheeled, powered tables.

What the tables were powered by, or how they were steered, remains unclear. All we know is that the Aussie coppers weren’t impressed.

“Police are concerned for the safety of those riding on the tables with no protective clothing, especially when on roads alongside motor vehicles,” said a police spokesman.

“There are overall safety concerns particularly if a traffic incident was to occur, resulting in the persons subjecting themselves to potential injury.”

Police studied the footage to identify the rogue picknickers. We’re told the table’s ‘drivers’ could be charged with driving an unregistered vehicle, and even drink-driving.

Strewth.

Reddit user ThatGuyBeezy returned from work In November to find his car in very slightly better condition than when he left it.

While Beezy’s ride had started the day with a mere three hubcaps, it now had four matching wheels… and a note on the windscreen.

“I noticed your car only had three hubcaps,” read the hand-scrawled note. “My car, at one time, also only had three hubcaps. I couldn’t find the same ones, so I bought a different set, but for some reason, saved the old ones. You happen to have the same ones. Enjoy the sweet hubcap playa.”

OK, it’s not, in strictly financial terms, the most generous act of charity in history. But who, truly, can put a price on hubcap wholeness?

Some say he has the best driving technique on earth, but can only communicate his knowledge via the medium of sheep. All we know is, the Stig could be responsible for the woolly daubings above.

We jest, of course: this is an entirely worthy road safety campaign by ‘Think!’, aimed at cutting the number of accidents on country roads by providing helpful instructions on the surrounding livestock.

As such, statements like ‘sharp bend ahead’ and ‘slow down’ are being displayed on the wandering balls of wool, finally making some use of their occasional dithering into the path of traffic. Quite how the sheep are expected to remain by sharp bends and braking zones is unclear.

Whether they demand drivers to perform ewe-turns is thus far unconfirmed.

We’ll admit the only car involved in this story is the one which likely transported Otto the bulldog to his triumph.

But a skateboard is wheeled transport, and this dog is its rather burly powerplant. We refute any accusations of a tenuous automotive link.

And just watch this video and try telling us, dear reader, that a skateboarding bulldog – nay, a Peruvian bulldog which has just taken the world record for skateboarding through the legs of most people (30 of them) – doesn’t make the world a better, happier place to be?

We fully expect Lewis Hamilton and Roscoe to make their way through this list during Formula 1's winter break.

What with all the GT-R-whupping acceleration modes and self-driving controversies, we’d forgive you for forgetting the Tesla Model S can, with some liberal options box ticking, carry seven people.

These US Police certainly didn’t know, given that they followed a Model S driver all the way home following reports of a child kidnap.

The owner had innocently popped his offspring in the rear-facing seat in the boot, a move which had been misconstrued by worried passers-by. Lord knows what they’d make of the Model X’s entry procedure…

Glum faces all round, as TG’s one worthy achievement in life – the fastest lawnmower in the world – has been ousted.

Yup. Our 116mph aboard a Honda mower has been beaten by 17mph, thanks to the rather bonkers 408bhp V8 powered Viking mower you see in the picture above and the video here.

We shall be gracious and congratulate the Norwegian team – and rider Pekka Lundefaret – for their achievement.

But it doesn’t look much like a mower, does it? Certainly not as much as ours did.

If anyone has a spare V8 and a mower-sized roll cage to hand, however, please send them to the usual office address…

The TG inbox is often inundated with surveys tenuous in their links to cars and pointless in their entire conception.

And so we discovered this year the identity of the UK’s happiest driver: a survey carried out by Zuto (nope, us neither) says it’s a bloke between 25 and 34, behind the wheel of a silver, Munich-made saloon car in Scotland’s capital city. Right.

Balancing out his glee is Britain’s grumpiest driver, a Nottingham male in his late forties driving a green Fiat.

Once we’d waded through that bobbins, we discovered the real story, the sucker punch, the revelation none of us could ever have discovered without the aid of a car finance company seeking PR.

“Driving blissfully down winding, country lanes, in calm weather and purely for pleasure, with no destination in mind... that’s where you’ll find the happiest people on the roads.”

Think we beat you to it.

The Nissan Qashqai is known as a crossover. You thought this meant it was a mish-mash of hatchback and SUV, but it appears it’s actually a crossover between a car and a Playstation pad. Um, what?

As part of Nissan’s tie-up with the Champions League, the Japanese carmaker set a team of engineers upon mating the wheel and pedals of a Qashqai to control Pro Evolution Soccer 2016.

You can see some of the process via these videos, while friend of TG Jann Mardenborough – who can be credited with the picture above – voiced his approval on social media.

Fancy a go?

Save for the odd wet race, modern-day Formula One is rarely a tremendously exciting spectacle. With a lot of it coming down to strategy, it’s a bit like chess. Only quicker. Unless you’re in a Manor.

Which is why it’s kind-of appropriate you can now buy a chess set where each piece is made out of a bit of F1 car. The parts, which all come from Lotus and Renault F1 cars from between 2005 and 2011, are turned and machined into brilliantly intricate bishops, rooks, knights, and the wee fellas.

With Maldonado’s propensity for hitting things, we suspect parts from this season will be in good supply. They might have to sweep them off the track first, however…

Earlier this year, the TG office was caught in an infinite YouTube loop of videos, showing old school buses slamming into each other at high speed.

It’s called figure-of-eight racing, and it involves very silly men taking to a Scalextric-like crossover track, only without the bridge. Cue many rather serious accidents. They do it with cars, too. With boats hitched to the trailers. Yeah.

The McLaren P1, Ferrari LaFerrari and Porsche 918 are engaged in what can only be described as a war of speed.

As people have been getting their hands on all three at once – something we did, ahem, in 2014 – Koenigsegg has issued a quiet reminder that its offerings are faster than the lot.

“Does it trouble Koenigsegg that we’re not included in tests like these?” the company asks. “That we’re not included in the #HolyTrinity that publications are writing about so much?

“Not really. Well, not until such a time as it troubles any of our customers.”

We don’t think that will happen anytime soon, seeing as the Agera R and One:1 are both quicker than any of the ‘Holy Trinity’.

Hashtag burn.

“It's not everyday that you see a donkey in the backseat of a police car!” roared the spacebar-averse Facebook page of Oklahoma’s City of Norman Police Department in early December.

Indeed it isn’t, but the local plod rushed into action when a stray donkey was found wandering the streets, sweeping the beast up and immediately posting this quite adorable picture on social media.

Those anxiously liking, sharing and commenting could breathe a sigh of relief shortly afterwards, though, when Norman Police completed the raid on its exclamation mark cupboard to report a happy ending.

“Great news! The donkey has been reunited with its owner!” it excitedly told us, reporting the ass’s owners thanked the police for “providing excellent care for the little guy after its great escape!”

Picture credit: Norman Police

Yep, an Audi TT ambulance. “What medical use might that be?”, you’d be forgiven for pondering, given the two-seater's weeny cabin.

It’s actually - we kid you not - used for a home circumcision service. And it was nicked from outside a patient’s house, after its owner - a private doctor - was approached by three men. Whether they were hooded remains unconfirmed.

But happily, that’s not the end of the story. Following a tip-off, the TT was recovered, having been abandoned by the thieves in a pub car park. Its niche schedule didn’t had to be snipped too much, then.

Picture credit: @ShomrimOfficial

Winter is a curious time, when hopes for a white Christmas are tempered with fear of skidding limply into a ditch the first time your car’s tyres meet frost.

The people of Kosovo have no such fear, though: they battle winter, however apocalyptic, thanks to their high-tech, foolproof methods to apply ice-bashing salt to their frozen roads.

Don’t believe us? Watch the video evidence right here...

Nope, we haven’t gone mad. What looks like the scariest, lairiest police car since the Polizia Huracan is actually a fake. Boo.

It’s the work of organisation ‘Tune It! Safe!’, which promotes safe and legal car modifying (and indeed exclamation marks) in Germany.

As such the Corvette has been tuned itself, beyond the blue lights and fear-bringing livery. There’s a full carbon bodykit, forged alloys and grippier tyres.

There aren’t any modifications to the ‘Vette’s standard 460bhp V8 though. It’s all about safety, after all…

“Happy as a pig in poo”. It’s a PG-rated paraphrasing of a well-known phrase. But as the picture above substantiates, there is a higher level of happiness. Happy as a pig in poo in a police car.

Oh yes. ‘Pig’, as the arresting officers from Shelby, Florida imaginatively dubbed him, was arrested for showing aggression towards a woman after escaping from his enclosure.

We’d imagine he wasn’t the first to hit a low ebb after finding himself trapped in the back of a police car. We do imagine, though, that he’s one of a very small club to protest by means of, ahem, defecation. Everywhere.

“It became a biohazard relatively quickly,” said Deputy Chief Mark Coil, somewhat eloquently. “Luckily for the department and the officers, the owner volunteered and cleaned the car for us.”

Picture credit: Shelby Township police

June’s big internet news surrounded the transformation of Bruce Jenner - gold medallist in decathlon at the 1976 Olympics and parent to some fairly famous kids in the shape of the Kardashians - into Caitlyn Jenner, becoming perhaps the world’s best known transgender woman in the process.

And if you’re going to make an announcement the world’s media will pore over, then why not do it from the harnessed seat of a GT3 RS? And not the latest one, no: the previous gen, last of the manuals GT3 RS, perhaps the most satisfying track-special supercar in existence. And importantly, the dress matches the decals…

Picture credit: DKNY

We imagine you aren’t a fan of the double-yellow line, for it causes inconvenience and/or expense wherever it may be daubed.

But surely it’s worn more stylishly by, you know, tarmac than it is people?

We refer you to the aftermath of a collision in Russia (yep, more Russian excellence) which saw a lorry full of yellow paint shed its load. Some of it hit the tarmac, the rest the front of the truck behind.

That includes its poor driver, who was left resembling a giant Lego man suffering shock. Thankfully only minor injuries were incurred, but the driver was said to be overcome with emulsion.

Sorry.

After a few months of online canvassing, builder ‘bricktrix_Carl’ garnered the required 10,000 electronic squiggles to get his Caterham car kit to actual Lego product meetings. In the near future - with a splash of luck and, we imagine, the blessing of Caterham itself - it could be a real thing. In shops.

As part of his campaign, Carl, who may or may not have an actual job, has built almost as many iterations of Seven as Caterham builds itself, proving the versatility of his kit. One for the Christmas list next year, hopefully...

If an image cheerier than the one above has been published online this year, we want to see it. Without wishing to generalise, we’re nigh on certain that everyone likes a) cars and b) dogs.

So the news that reached us from Canada, courtesy of CBC News, pretty much made our April.

“At a glance, I thought it was a couple of old ladies driving a little car,” said one onlooker as a Pontiac Vibe swung its way out of an animal hospital car park. His eyes deceived him. The Vibe’s driver and co-driver were, in fact, a pair of pooches, presumably on their way home from a check-up.

The rather more prosaic truth is that a dozy owner had left their car out of gear, resulting in a pair of unsuspecting pets gently coasting their way down the road until onlookers intervened. Not before they’d snapped a picture that has made CBC’s Nova Scotia news section one the happiest corners of the internet in 2015, though…

Source: CBC News

Adorable Don is a Scottish sheep dog (can dogs have nationalities?), who, clearly craving attention while his owner Tom Hamilton examined a lamb, prodded the controls of the farmer’s tractor.

Going one better than those Canadian canines in the last slide, though, Don didn’t stick to a bumble past some camera phone-wielding bystanders. Instead, he burst through a fence and onto the M74 motorway, as reported by Traffic Scotland. Given its curious penchant for animal pictures on its Twitter account, Traffic Scotland must have been over the moon with Don’s derring-do.

After briefly heading northbound, Don, the tractor and a potentially quite hazardous situation were halted by the central reservation. A smashed windscreen was happily the only damage, allowing our furry friend to go back and live on the farm. And not in that way, happily…

Source: Traffic Scotland

Marc Marquez’s win took most of the headlines at the MotoGP in Austin, Texas, but column inches were spared for a rather plucky track invader, christened Little Moto.

This one-year-old Shiba Inu mix, clearly a big Stefan Bradl fan, scampered on track to get a closer look at his two-wheeled hero, as pictured on the @Speed Twitter account. And as some cruel commenters pointed out, he achieved a more impressive lean angle than Bradl.

Little Moto’s escapade brought a red flag on the practice session he’d scampered onto, but his fame was assured and, after spending just a week in the local animal centre, he has now successfully been rehomed.

And yep, we’d bet most of our money he was named after this shot was taken.

F1 spoilers are marvellous, right? They 1) look mega, 2) stop cars crashing into stuff when they go really fast (unless you’re Pastor Maldonado), and 3) hone some of the aerodynamics that filters down to air-crafting cars like the Ferrari 458 Speciale and McLaren P1.

There’s a fourth benefit, though, and it concerns the Munch Bunch and Cheesestrings we’re buying at the shop later. Williams has seen the open-fronted fridges in supermarkets, observed the energy they waste and shopper-shivering they induce by spilling their cold air into the aisles, and spotted an opportunity to apply aerofoils to better direct the cool air onto the food, not the people lobbing it in their trolley.

Want some maths? Up to ten per cent of the UK’s energy is consumed by its food shops, and up to 70 per cent of their energy bills are dedicated to their fridges. Trials have started, with Williams claiming it could nearly half those fridges’ energy consumption.

Now all we need are DRS-equipped trolleys to better overtake the ditherers.

From dizzying F1 tech, to this incredibly aww-inducing picture of five tiny-wee robins (a worm of robins, collective noun fans) chirping away inside the engine bay of a Land Cruiser Amazon.

Dave Merchant, from Somerset, found the chicks as he checked his oil back in May, and reckoned they’d covered around 250 miles since nesting. But he was adamant they were safe and sound.

“The fact that I was driving the Land Cruiser around while the robins were nesting and that the birds hatched successfully shows what a good car this is,” says Merchant. “As soon as I saw the chicks I of course stopped driving the car and I won’t use it again until they have flown the nest.”

2015 saw 'Back to the Future day' take place. Something which may have led to you dreaming of owning a DeLorean. If so, we’ll wager that dream didn’t involve FIVE DeLoreans. Five DeLoreans that include a monster truck, a hovercraft, a roadster and a limo, compete with three sets of gullwing doors. But then you’re not Rich Weissensel.

“Crazy?” he says. “Absolutely, I would say I’m without a doubt DeLorean crazy.” We’re not about to argue.

It’s all very well reading an impressive payload figure for a big lorry, but it’s another thing altogether to see it in action. Step forward the Mercedes-Benz Actros, here carring a 250-ton dumper truck of epic proportions.

It’s hardly the world’s tightest corner it’s been photographed emerging from, but we imagine it was a fairly involved experience making it round nonetheless. Hats off to the driver…

Animals in, on or around cars never fail to titillate TG. We feared the genre had reached its zenith in April, though, in the sleepy town of Clyst St Mary in the south-west of England.

News reached us from The Guardian that local peacocks had been causing thousands of pounds of damage to Clyst’s car population.

How so? ‘Agitated and frisky’ peafowl had, it seemed, been spotting their reflections in the metalwork, mistaking their own fizzog for a rival, then launching an attack on the poor car. Locals were left dismayed at the damaged caused.

“The pecking has completely ruined the back of my car,” ranted one Clystian, immediately bagging a podium spot in the ‘best quotes on TG.com this decade’ contest.

Picture: Jebulon

Go to school in North Korea and, as well as finding maths and PE on your timetable, you’ll also discover ‘Kim Jong-un’s Revolutionary Activities’.

A report by The Telegraph in April uncovered a manual that was issued to North Korean schools, informing the little ‘uns that Jong-un was a child prodigy. The highlights? The Dear Leader could drive at the age of three, and was a victorious yacht racer at nine.

Cynics have suggested that the suspect CV is being peddled to infants in a bid to boost the dictator’s popularity.

But then maybe his childhood was ram-packed with extraordinary achievements? After all, his father - Kim Jong-il - could walk and talk at eight weeks old and wrote the six greatest operas in the history of music…

Picture: © Pyongyang/Xinhua Press/Corbis

Back at the beginning of 2015, it was Superbowl advert time, something the car world always indulges in.

Mercedes thought beyond merely placing a celebrity inside one of its products, instead choosing one half of a children’s fable.

Merc’s ad doesn’t teach us, as you might expect, that slow and steady wins the race. Instead, we learn that selfie-taking smugness is not cool, but turbocharged V8s and swearing tortoises are.

January saw the Rolex 24-hour race take place at Daytona. And full of thrills, spills and lovely racing cars it was too.

What our gallery didn’t show you, however, was the bloody aftermath of one of the race’s more distressing incidents. Namely, a petrolhead possum - keen to see close-up just what kind of front aero a Porsche 911 utilises at a round-the-clock race - ended up rather dead after bursting through said Porsche’s radiator (though miraculously only bending, rather than breaking it).

To add insult to more-than-injury, the possum was mowed down by Andy Lally, a vegan and keen animal lover. Oops. For the purposes of taste, the picture above is the most death-free from Andy’s Twitter feed, which you can click through to if you’re feeling morbid.

TG suggests Lally should, in future, fit his 911 with a possump guard. Pos-sump. No? Ah, come on…

Some pretty weird stuff happened in 2014, but happily, less than three weeks into its successor, the weirdness continued. Allow us to point you towards this video, where we saw British artist Ian Berry - aka Denimu - talk us through his artwork of gone-too-soon F1 hero Ayrton Senna. Nothing unusual about that, you might think.

The clue’s in Berry’s alter-ego, though. Forget your watercolours or epically comprehensive tins of coloured pencils, Berry used the material you’ve probably got wrapped around your legs as you read this. Or in the case of his Senna portrait, materials from the jeans of the F1 icon’s family.

Titter all you like about its quirkiness, though, as the picture was for a good cause, its proceeds going to Brazilian charities helping impoverished children.

Traffic management isn’t a topic we regularly enjoy the intricacies of around a pub table on an evening (honest), but we imagine you’ll join us in wonderment watching this video of an American road zipper in action.

One is now in use on San Francisco’s frequently clogged-up Golden Gate Bridge; the idea is that it picks up the median barrier from one side of a lane, and relays it on the other, allowing the bridge’s six lanes of traffic to be split unevenly - four lanes to two - to favour opposing directions at either end of the day to soften rush hour traffic.

The barrier itself cost $30million and comprises over 3,000 12-inch wide concrete and steel slabs. And it will soak up all but a Sherman tank, which is more than can be said for the floppy plastic pylons it replaces. Admit it, you’re mesmerised, aren’t you?

If teenagers are to defeat such sweeping stereotypes about not understanding the world, we need better evidence that they have a tacit understanding of why vegetables are actually grown.

An 18-year-old from Clydebank was clearly a little confused, as he was charged in 2015 for using potatoes as a drive-by weapon, lobbing them at pedestrians in three separate incidents. One such bout of ill-behaviour saw a thrown potato quickly followed by a tub of coleslaw, something the injured victim didn’t relish one bit.

Can you name a weirder food-based car crime?

And so finishes the greatest line ever published on the internet. Five solar-powered robots, with lights, cameras and gesticulating arms, have been ‘employed’ by Congolese police to control mischievous drivers in the capital city of Kinshasa. And apparently it’s working.

Should Beastie Boys’ Intergalactic video gain any serious exposure in Congo, though, we fear driver obedience levels will fall quickly…

Emerging straight from the school of transparent fibs with top grades was Flavio Roberto de Souza. Back in March, he was the judge presiding over a case of Eike Batista, a Brazilian billionaire standing accused of dodgy trading.

Upon ordering the confiscation of Batista’s numerous supercars, de Souza then bagged one of them - an unspecified Porsche - for his evening commute home. His excuse? The police had run out of parking spaces.

It won’t surprise you to learn a new judge was quickly appointed…

That’s according to Randy Olson, a self-confessed ‘data tinkering’ computer genius with previous of sussing out the perfect path to quickly finding where Wally is. Don’t say he doesn’t know how to ruin our fun.

Anyhow, rather than flick through an atlas with Trip Advisor loaded up in the background, he used his computing cleverness to calculate a route across America (and back again) that takes in most of the country’s states (48 of ‘em) and key landmarks (50 of those) with maximum efficiency.

The end result is the squiggle you see above; given it goes full circle, it can be started at any of its points, and Olson reckons it will take 9.33 days, though you’ll need to expand that considerably to fit in the burgers, stopovers and selfies you’ll surely want to indulge in along the way.

Not sold on the US? Olson has also worked his geeky magic on a map of Europe, producing a 16,000-mile, 14-day (!) trip that takes in 45 stops including Lapland, Monaco and Stonehenge. How good a road trip buddy he’d actually be has not been calculated.

Scary technology is rarely far away these days, be it robots riding bikes or cars that drive themselves, there’s plenty to keep us anxious.

So how do cars driven purely with brainpower make you feel? Over in China, that very thing has been developed. It’s been two years in the making, and it’s fairly rudimentary, with only shunting forwards and backwards currently possible.

But then autonomous cars never used to be able to pilot themselves around race tracks. And now they’ve got their own race series.

You have been warned…

This curious monstrosity is called the Relax Cabin. It is, as you have doubtless figured out, a motorhome based upon the Toyota Prius.

The Relax sleeps four lucky, lucky friends, includes a microwave and fridge on board, and - for reasons we cannot entirely explain - reminds us greatly of the hairstyle of British politician Douglas Hurd in the 1980s.

Available only in Japan (of course), the conversion costs some 2.4 million yen (around £13,000), plus the price of a donor Prius. Quite what the camper-quiff does to the Pruis’s legendarily parsimonious fuel economy remains unclear.

What do you mean you didn't get one for Christmas?

It’s an office desk, milled by Design Epicentrum in the style of the world’s fastest production car. It is not, however, officially sanctioned by Bugatti: note the lack of badge on the nose, and general lack of million-quid production values.

But hey, if you want to make a punchy first impression in your next hard-hitting business meeting, what better way to do so then to emerge from behind a desk that looks quite a lot like the front bit of a very fast car?

Quite what Bugatti’s legal department thinks of this paper-clip tribute, TG would not like to speculate. We can, however, be sure of one thing: if retaliation does come, it shall be very swift. And likely quad-turbocharged.

In 2015, TG found much mirth from stories involving dogs and cars.

We also tittered more than a few times at stories emerging from Russia, where normal rules of motoring seem not to apply.

So let’s end our 2015 round-up with a story that combines both, and this wee little pooch-ski keen not only to be man’s best friend via cuddles and cuteness, but by being the mobile toolbox with a face we’ve all dreamed of.

If there’s not a broad grin across your face now, there’s no hope.

Here’s to a 2016 jam-packed with toolbox dogs, and a whole lot more bonkers car news besides…