Ten Things We Learned This Week

Last weekend, the Top Gear Festival Barbados took place, and as part of the event, we corralled a little-known Formula One driver named Lewis Hamilton and a man who HATES TYRES. His name is Ken Block.

Building them a bespoke circuit, each was strapped into their respective company cars – Hamilton’s 2013 F1 machine, Block's GRC Fiesta – and then set free.

The resulting video is just… brilliant. F1 vs GRC should be a Thing. Somebody make it a Proper Thing.

When Lewis met Ken: pics and video from the Top Gear Festival in Barbados

Here’s a picture of comedian Russell Brand, who was snapped hugging a cyclist in a successful attempt to stop road rage.

According to reports, a van driver nearly crashed into the cyclist, resulting in a heated exchange. Brand saw the incident, jumped out of his S-Class and gave the cyclist a hug. The cyclist laughed it off and rode off.

The original picture was tweeted out by user @Joe_Stas. Brand retweeted with the hashtag #loveisallyouneed. Crisis averted. 

According to the Daily Telegraph, police are investigating a spate of thefts of headlights from Land Rovers, which are then sold on to illegal chemists to help them grow cannabis plants.

Why? Apparently they help the plants grow quicker, and thieves are targeting Range Rovers because apparently they are able to remove them in as little as 60 seconds. People of Cheshire, keep 'em peeled. 

A shout out to Steve Tarrant, who drove a TGA mobility scooter the furthest distance ever over 24 hours at Goodwood circuit.

He completed this epic feat last Sunday, 18 May, on a TGA Breeze S4 GT scooter, with a record-breaking distance of 190.2 miles, driving through the night and completing over 1800 laps of a 167m circuit. The only stops he made were for brief battery changes.

Steve – who lost his leg and suffered multiple injuries in a motorsport accident in 2000 – marshals internationally at things like Le Mans and Petit Le Mans races, and was a medal bearing Games Maker during the Olympics and Paralympics.

Though the attempt is still pending ratification, it’s a Herculean effort. Good man, Steve!

The giant smorgasbord of ugly that is the aftermarket bodykit industry is rarely punctured by triumphs. But this £2,916 VeilSide (remember them from the nineties?) kit that turns your Toyota iQ into a GT-R might be one of them.

Consisting of a front bumper spoiler, side skirts, rear bumper spoiler, front wings, bonnet, and iQR badges, it loudly and triumphantly informs fellow motorist that you have both a sense of humour and willing to stake your car on it. Aston Martin recently tried this trick with an official car, you may remember… 

And by ‘brand new', we do of course actually mean ‘it's got new headlights and new engines'. Citroen has given its supermini a bit of a refresh, featuring LED and Xenon headlights inspired by the Numero 9 and Wild Rubis concept cars.

There are new colour options, two new diesel engines (and a new petrol which we may or may not get in the UK) and something called ‘Active City Brake'.

It's a system which which fixes a radar at the top of the windscreen and detects whether the car in front is likely to become an integral part of the DS3's lovely new lights, and activates the brakes to prevent a collision.

Some say he can swim seven lengths underwater, and that he has webbed buttocks. All we know is he was spotted snorkeling at the Top Gear Festival Barbados.

Well, when we say snorkeling, he was standing upright in some water with his arms folded. Not quite got the hang of this, have you Stiggy?

The Stig as you've never seen him before

Severnvalley Motorsport wanted to one-up Nissan's very own GT-R engine Juke. And so they built a GT-R engine Nissan Qashqai+2. Then they turned the engine up to Maximum Stig (1100bhp), and made it very fast indeed. Like 0-62mph in 2.7 seconds fast. Like a top speed of over 200mph fast.

Is this the ultimate Fast People Carrier?

Meet the 200mph Nissan Qashqai

"If you floor it, it vibrates like you've driven into a ball of static electricity. Then, once the power's filled up every inch of the drivetrain, the wheels join in and it takes a great bite out of the horizon. Like the first four seconds of the 0-62mph sprint are all admin, then the final 0.4's actual acceleration..."

Yes, that's right - a six-wheeled Mercedes G-Class that'll go from 0-62mph in 4.4 seconds. You want to read the rest of our review below, immediately.

First drive: the Brabus G63 AMG 6x6

Yes folks, for the grand price of £4,495, you can own a former Jaguar XJR press car (they’re the cars motoring journalists use for review purposes and are sometimes returned with no kerbed wheels at all). This example once appeared on an old episode of Top Gear, driven by a man called Jeremy Clarkson.

This one’s got that lovely supercharged 4.0-litre V8, good for 370bhp – or as many of those horses that are left – with 140k on the clock. It’s also green, gets a CD multichanger (it was the 90s), air con, cruise control, some power leather seats, and many other bits and bobs.

Fancy it?

Check out the advert here