Ten Things We Learned This Week

Yes, everybody's favourite plain-speaking, flat-cap-wearing, whippet-walking corner of Britain got a new tourist attraction this week: a maze featuring a massive 50 metre head of Jeremy Clarkson. 

York maze - the largest in Europe apparently - has paid tribute to three "Yorkshire" legends by cutting their likenesses into a large field: cricketing miserablist Geoffrey Boycott, shouty mountaineer Brian Blessed, and our very own Jezza, who was, of course, born and raised in Doncaster. 

It's open from 12 July to 1 September if you fancy the thought of wandering about inside Clarkson's head for a while…

Will the second-generation Audi R8 - due to arrive next year - come stuffed with diesel power? Maybe so, according to Audi's big boss Rupert Stadler, as we reported exclusively on TopGear.com this week. 

Speaking at an event celebrating a quarter-century of Audi TDI power (ain't no party like a turbodiesel party!), Prof Stadler told TG that the company wants greater technology transfer from its Le Mans program - which secured its 13th 24-hour title in 15 years at La Sarthe in June - to road cars.

Sacrilege? Judging by your reactions to the story, it's actually a rather popular idea. Now if they can just get that noise right… 

This week in Florida, 26-year-old Derek Denesevich was accused of paying Broward Clerk of Courts employee Porscha Kyles to hand over personal details of random drivers, which he then allegedly used to file false tax returns to claim refunds from the IRS. Derek Denesevich has now been released on $50,000 bond, and is expected to return to court on Monday. Derek Denesevich has a tattoo of the Bentley logo on his face. 

While we've seen an avalanche of Bentley barber's chairs, laptops and luggage this year in an effort to "sweat the brand", we imagine this might be one brand extension too far for the venerable Crewe outfit. 

When getting rid of a £750 banger, most go for the traditional derisory ad on Ebay glossing over the sticky boot-catch and curious Spain-shaped stain on the passenger seat.  

For David Johns, a Sydney-based ad creative, this clearly wouldn't do. Click here to watch the excellent, cliche-busting masterpiece he created to flog his 15-year-old Holden Barina which took the internet by storm this week. Right up there with our very own "Work Harder, Buy A Car" efforts from the last series. 

OK, it will probably be raining again by the time we finish typing this sentence, but London is currently in the grip of its traditional 48 hour summer. And to top off the glorious weather, yesterday a whole load of supercars descended on Tower Bridge to promote the DVD release of far-fetched-credibility-stretching-car-smash-thriller Need For Speed. Starring, of course, this year's Star In A Reasonably Car and very nice man indeed Aaron Paul.

Racing planes, demolishing speed records, de-slowing Captain Slow: over the years, Top Gear has done many ambitious and decidedly-not-rubbish things with the Bugatti Veyron. But none quite so ambitious as this week's most popular story on TopGear.com.

Chicago to Los Angeles, 2400 miles along Route 66, in the car to end all cars. The Veyron Grand Sport Vitesse: the convertible version of the faster version of the fastest road car in history, the car we recently declared the greatest of the last two decades. If not ever.

No one had ever done anything like this with a Veyron before. And they won’t again. With Veyron production ending next year before Bugatti opens a new chapter in its Going Faster history, this was our fond farewell to old girl. Head to the links below for our day-by-day photo diary, and then get the full story in the Adventures issue of Top Gear magazine – out now in print and digitally.

Bugatti on 66: Day One gallery

Bugatti on 66: Day Two gallery

Bugatti on 66: Day Three gallery

Bugatti on 66: Day Four gallery

Bugatti on 66: Day Five gallery

Bugatti on 66: Day Six gallery

This week Toyota announced that a Prius managed to record 698mpg while lapping the Nurburgring. Click here to watch the lap in all its breathtaking, sticking to the 60km/h minimum, seat-of-the-pants glory.

We're well-used to leaves paralysing train lines in Blighty, but not entire roads. Yet exactly that happened in sleepy Stroud this week, as a leaf blocked a narrow lane bringing travel CHAOS to the region. 

We are (arf), of course (snigger), referring to a Nissan Leaf (collapses in hysterics). Yes, the EV who's range once once forced Jeremy and James to go brass-rubbing in Lincoln. This time, a police spokesperson said: "Police closed Inchbrook Hill, Stroud, just before midnight after a Nissan Leaf car broke down, blocking the narrow road.

“A female driver and child were transported to safety by a recovery firm.

“There was some difficulty in removing the vehicle, because it is electrically-powered. A recovery company is en route.”

Source: Stroud Life

"It’s got amazing traction: I had a job shifting the back end outward for photos, even when going repeatedly round a hairpin. In the rest of a day’s driving, it simply never felt likely to happen. And anyway, the traction control in Sport mode is adaptive and fabulously effective."

Some words from Paul Horrell's review of the new Ferrari California. Words, unfortunately, that the driver in this video clearly felt honour-bound to disprove in a wonderfully inept piece of driving.

Clearly a busy week in Florida for tangential motoring news. Following on from the man with the Bentley on his face, comes word that a 12-year-old is in custody for stealing his school bus… for the second time. 

According to the Parker Police Department and Bay District Schools, the young man has been charged with taking a bus from a compound at Parker Elementary School and driving it 55 miles to Franklin County. This follows an episode in June where he was charged with taking a bus and driving it from the same location to the Wal-Mart on Front Beach Road, a distance of 15 miles.

"[I got a call saying] they had a bus stopped with a juvenile driver," said the wonderfully-named Parker Chief of Police, Chief Sweatt, clearly a bit hot under the collar about the whole thing."Our initial reaction was 'oh no, not again.'" 

Picture above unrelated

Source: WMBB.com