Ten Things We Learned This Week

The Top Gear Technology Centre has brought many great innovations to the world of motoring, but even we are yet to attach machine guns and missiles to a car. 

Happily, these guys have. This 1965 Chysler Imperial was the car in the 2011 film The Green Hornet, and features (deep breath) two hood-mounted Browning .30 cal machine guns (which when hooked up to a propane tank fire flames through the barrel to simulate gunfire), 12 Stinger missiles to the front and rear bumper, a flame-thrower mounted to the front grill, and beanbag launchers and shotgun barrels to the front. 

We're not entirely sure the DVLA will approve. Still, if you fancy it the car is going up for auction next week at Massachusetts based RR Auctions.

The people who populate car internet forums aren’t usually the most romantic types. Extremely useful in tracking down an electric window motor for a 2000 mk1 172 Clio, yes, but we suspect some of them may not even have girlfriends. 

Still, Miatamaaan on an American Miata forum bucked the trend this week, when he corralled 44 fellow Mazda enthusiasts into the car park at his local high school to capture the image above. And she even said “yes”.  

Source: Miata.net 

Four unmarked police cars were involved in a high-speed pursuit along the M275 in Portsmouth this week, chasing a driver going hell for leather at 100mph. 

Having surrounded their foe and pulled him over, the police discovered driver Colin Ellmore about to deliver a baby. Tiffany, the mother-to-be, was being rushed to hospital but ran out of time. Lola was born minutes later. 

Sergeant Simon Goss of the road policing unit pro-active team said: "We initially thought it was a stolen vehicle so put our lights on to flash it down. But it kept going at the high speeds. 

"We boxed it in, forcing it to stop, and when it did the driver got out and we thought he was running off.

"But he ran around the car to the passenger side and shouted something about a baby. When we got to the car we saw the baby in the man's hands. I have never experienced anything like it before." No further action was taken. 

Source: The Guardian (picture above unrelated) 

Jeremy, James and Richard are in South Africa this weekend, hosting the Top Gear Festival (more of that on TopGear.com in the coming days, including Stig bungee-jumping an F1 car. Yes, seriously). 

And on departing Blighty, May was pleased to discover his ceaseless travelling in the noble cause of cocking about has been honoured thus: his very own airport lounge.

According to the Mail, arch pedant Albert Gifford is currently locked in a furious battle with German giants BMW over a phrase in its new 2 Series Coupe ad. 

Albert contends that BMW, not content with mangling concepts of Britishness with its awful series of Blighty-themed Minis, is now ruining the language as well. The short 2 Series film ends with the slogan “it bites as bad as it barks”. Albert says that “bad” is not an adverb, and should instead be “badly”. And to be fair, he’s right. 

Ashley Parker, the BMW Customer Service Executive dealing with the complaint, said: 'It has been logged in our system and we have contacted our advertising department, but the advert is not going to change.”

Source: The Mail 

You may remember mysterious youtube channel TaxTheRich from such hits as "Rolls Royce Phantom Doing Ballerina-esque Skids In Someone's Garden". Or "The Ferrari Enzo That Thought It Was A WRC Car". Or the great "Red Vs Yellow Ferrari F50 Tug Of War". Well, they're back, and - love it or hate it - as mechanically blasé as ever, with a self-immolating Jaguar XJ220…  

Continued and sustained destruction of caravans has been a theme of TG telly for some time now, but sometimes it can seem we’re a lone voice in the dark. 

Not any more: the company behind Tic Tacs appear to be fully on board. Watch them wreck a caravan with lots of apples here

Last weekend, TopGear.com drove down to Le Mans in some cars, set up camp at the circuit and then reported live for three days on the world’s most prestigious endurance race. It was an epic undertaking.

Many biscuits and gallons of tea were consumed in the process of bringing you this live blog, which took in an all-time classic 24 Hour race. You can read how Audi's victory unfolded here. We still need some sleep. 

If this isn’t one of the coolest pictures you’re likely to see today, then we’ll eat our Stig soaps-on-a-rope. It’s Lewis Hamilton, at last weekend’s MotoGP race in Barcelona, on a bike laying down a serious strip of rubber.

And for additional cool points, the bike itself was fired up by none other than TT legend John McGuinness. Hopefully providing some inspiration for Austria… 

The annual lets-all-destroy-Lord-March’s-front-garden party that is the Goodwood FoS is nearly upon us. Next week, in fact, and we’ll be there bringing you all the latest news and Things That Are Running Up The Hill. McLaren will release their newest race car, there's the first car from Jaguar's new Special Vehicle Operations unit and many other debuts. Ready your finest oversteer faces and we'll see you there.