Ten things we learned this week: 29 April 2016 edition

The Italdesign Parcour was a V10-powered crossover concept – sort of like a Lamborghini Gallardo crossed with a Range Rover Evoque – which we first ogled at the 2013 Geneva motor show. We say ‘was’, because it had an unfortunate interface with Goodwood’s hillclimb hay bales the following summer, and not much has been seen of the Parcour since.

Well, the Parcour is coming back, and to celebrate Italdesign wants your help coming up with a new livery. On the design house’s website there’s a graphics pack you can use to come up with an appropriate colour scheme, which needs to be submitted by 31 May 2016. The winner will win two VIP passes to the Parco del Valentino rally and two tickets to a shindig at Italdesign’s headquarters on 11 June. That could be some pretty productive procrastination...

Top Gear naturally upholds the belief that no matter what you drive, you’re not immune to the law. Break the speed limit or run a red light and you’ll deserve the resulting punishment. But even so, London’s parking wardens have taken the cake a bit this week by slapping a £120 parking fine on the windscreen of a £10m Ferrari 512 LM racecar. The cheek of it.

The 45-year old V12 endurance racer was parked in picturesque Kensington Mews, while historic car specialists Fiskens snapped some photographs of the immaculate classic ahead of an upcoming auction. After observing the car contravening the local parking laws for over five minutes, the 512 was collared with the paper penalty. Perhaps Fiskens could make the difference back legally parking it elsewhere and charging punters a quid just to look at it. We'd pay.

With less than 100 days to go until the start of the Olympic Games in Rio, BMW has marked the passing of the milestone by unveiling the wheelchair it has designed for the US Paralympic team.

The fleet of chairs – which will be used by Team USA’s track and field squad – feature carbon fibre and have been custom measured for each individual.

“Working on this project has been a truly rewarding experience for my team and we’re proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish,” said BMW’s Brad Cracchiola.

The question is, will his team follow it up with an even faster M Division version?

It’s the question that nature programmes never seem to answer: which cars would animals drive if they had the necessary limbs to do so?

Well, this week Fiat has done its best to convince us that if eagles were on the market for some wheels, they’d definitely choose a Fiat 124.

“We all want to be as free as the birds,” reasons the voiceover. “But maybe the birds want to be as free as us.”

It’s a startling revelation. Our money was on the Eagle E-type being the vehicle of choice for America’s national bird...

Image credit: Fiat USA

When you think of Rolls-Royce, you think luxury. Attention to detail. Gorgeous materials. And expensive price tags. So it’s only fitting the Goodwood-based brand has revealed a six-piece luggage set inspired by – and designed to fit in – its Wraith super-coupe. The price for all six items? £24,248 – before tax.

If you’re being asked to pay Golf GTI money for a family of bags, you’d expect all of the above qualities in abundance, and so it proves: carbonfibre shells for light weight and strength, magnetic handle mechanisms, and the best feature – self-righting wheel centre-caps, just like the party pieces on Rolls's cars.

If this all sounds like prissy garnish to you, not so fast. Rolls-Royce consulted the world authorities on posh luggage before designing this lot: the concierge services of the world’s ultra-luxury hotels. If there’s anyone who can spot corner-cutting in transportation of the jet set’s dirty laundry, it’s the door staff at The Dorchester and suchlike.

The life of supercar-mad YouTuber Marchettino appears to be a rather good one, traveling the world filming the most exotic supercars being put through their paces. This week, though, things went a tiny bit wrong when, while borrowing a friend’s modified Ferrari 458 Speciale, our camera-wielding friend failed to notice he’d not shut the bonnet properly. Hey, we’ve all been there, right? Pesky supercar bonnet clasps…

It promptly flipped open, knackering the bonnet and cracking the Speciale’s windscreen. The damage wasn’t too bad (well, if you consider how dangerous it was to have been temporarily blinkered by an errant body panel), but there’s a lesson in there for all of us here: don’t wrap your Speciale in purple, or karma will bite you back.

The XE has been on sale for a year, and to celebrate Jaguar has revealed just how much of it is, um, made from second hand materials. A cake might have been better.

Anyway, the British carmaker’s ‘closed-loop’ aluminium recycling system allows it to reuse 50,000 tonnes of the metal every year, a figure which equates to about 200,000 XE body shells.

Jaguar has also said that the recycling process allows it to prevent 500,000 tonnes of CO₂ escaping into the atmosphere, and that it saves 95 per cent of the energy that would be used creating aluminium from scratch.

Cabbies in Hungary’s capital this week organised a protest for the second time this year, angry about Uber and the small profit margins caused by strict regulations.

Laws dictate how big taxis must be, as well as what hue of yellow they must be painted and how long their owners can keep them for.

And with a fare of about one dollar-per-kilometre fixed by the city, it means taxi drivers can’t afford to compete with the popular ride-hailing app without biting into their already diminished profits.

At least it made for an interesting drone video...

Image credit: Drone Media Studio

Far be it from us to cast aspersions on the common sense of Dubai’s police force, but hey, when you count a Ferrari FF, Mercedes SLS AMG and Lamborghini Aventador among your squad cars, it’s fair to say you’re not in the same realm of reality as the Metropolitan Police and their turbodiesel panda cars.

Even so, everyone’s favourite tourist-pleasing emergency service has been stretching the limits of common sense even further this week by revealing it now has the world’s fastest fire ‘truck’, in the distinctly un-truck-like shape of a Chevrolet Corvette Stingray. The fast bit isn’t it doubt, thanks to the 460bhp V8 and reputed 186mph top speed. But ‘truck’? It’s only got a fire extinguisher on board. No hoses and no ladders. So it’s no good for getting our cat out of a tree...

Smartphone zombies – or ‘Smombies’ as they are fast becoming known – have become an increasing menace on streets the world over in recent years.

However, one city in Germany is finally fighting back. Rather than allowing the nuisance species to take over, officials in Augsburg have begun to roll out measures designed to stop further chaos.

Primarily, the city has started trialling tram-line traffic lights on the floor at pedestrian crossing points, so that anyone distracted by their phone doesn’t miss vital red and green signals.

Sensible or silly? We don’t know. Just don’t let the Smombies bite.

Image credit: Augsburger Allgemeine