Ten Things We Learned This Week

At last weekend’s Austin GP, Red Bull clocked a 1.923-second pitstop on Mark Webber’s car. That’s the first time a pit crew has broken under the two second barrier, beating Red Bull’s own record of 2.05 seconds at the Malaysian Grand Prix this year.

Of course, F1 pit stops have become somewhat quicker after the ban on refueling in 2010. Even so, that’s a mighty impressive time. Or maybe they’re just trying to get rid of Mark Webber more quickly…

SOURCE: CNN 

It measures 615cm from nose to tail. Which is nearly a metre longer than a Rolls-Royce Wraith. It packs a 500bhp, 7.0-litre GM V8. It has 44-inch wheels and will do 0-62mph in six seconds. It is the Youabian Puma, it was unveiled at the LA Show, and it may be our favourite thing in the history of ever. Bow before the Puma. Bow.

VW’s diesel-electric ‘Twin-Up’ returns an official 258mpg. It has a 33-litre fuel tank. Which means, if Top Gear’s Top Gear Maths is correct, it should go 1873 miles between refuels. Which is enough to get you from John O’Groats to Rome, with enough left in the tank to find a parking space.

In the real world you will struggle to achieve 1873 miles per tank, for two reasons. One, official consumption figures are always wildly over-optimistic, particularly when it comes to hybids. Two, and more pressingly, the Twin-Up is only a concept. But it’ll be real. Soon. Been nice knowing you, Shell, BP, Esso…

One’s an international sports star with several Grand Slam titles. The other is Maria Sharapova. No, that’s not right, is it?

Check out our gallery of the good, the bad and the very long-legged from the LA Show… 

In the early Nineties, Gordon Murray designed the McLaren F1, the 243mph three-seater that permanently changed the face of hypercars. Now Murray has teamed up with Yamaha on this, the Motiv city car.

The two-seater isn't QUITE so fast as the F1 – it’s all-electric, will take 15 seconds to get to 62mph and isn’t capable of breaking the UK’s motorway speed limit – but, in its own way, might be just as revolutionary. Why? Let James May explain…

Brian Gillespie crashed his modified Honda Insight at 178mph. It was a big crash. Brian survived, because he is as hard as nails. We featured the video of Brian Gillespie’s crash on this very website, because we are rubber-necking voyeurs who are obsessed by big crashes. And then Brian’s wife popped up in our comments section to say that Brian loves Top Gear, and seeing her husband’s MASSIVE CRASH on TopGear.com ‘made her day’.

There are two morals of this story. One, the Good Lord Of Speed Runs does not like eco-hybrids. Two, Brian and his wife are awesome.

Jag puts a roof on its two-seat sports thing, gives it a 542bhp supercharged V8 and to be honest we stopped reading all the technical stuff at that point and just stared at the F-Type Coupe in happy wonder. Look. Look at it. And listen to it. Now decide to what level of financial immorality you’re prepared to stoop to buy one.

This is what happens when you turn a computer game into a movie. Acting? Plot? Who cares about acting and plot when there’s a MUSTANG DANGLING BELOW A HELICOPTER?

Nissan reckons its fat-at-the-back-thin-at-the-front Deltawing concept will work on road as well as track. To prove this, it invited us to the middle of the Arizona desert to drive its prototype ‘BladeGlider’. We were excited.

When we turned up, we discovered the prototype BladeGlider was in fact an Ariel Atom with the front chopped up. This was unexpected. But turns out you can learn rather a lot from a butchered lump of Somerset scaffolding…

The Company Formerly Known As Datsun revealed two rear-drive coupe concepts at the Tokyo show, a pair of blocky, old-school beauties designed to reengage da yoof of today with sports cars.

We want Nissan to build them. And the good news is that Nissan really, really wants to build them too. But this requires you to give its iDx concepts the thumbs-up.

“If we get a great reaction with the concept,” company boss Carlos Ghosn told Top Gear, “that makes a business.”

You know what you gotta do…