Ten things we learned this week

One man owns all the hybrid hypercars

When we gathered together the LaFerrari, Porsche 918 and McLaren P1, it involved months of negotiations and hundreds of phone calls. And no small amount of sweating and swearing.

For British businessman Paul Bailey, it was no more stressful than writing out three rather plump cheques (do billionaire businessmen still use cheques?).

This week, Bailey became the first civilian to own all three of 2014's headline hybrids, coolly driving his McLaren to the Ferrari dealer before heading off to pick up his Porsche. Together with his wife and mate, he whisked his £3m trio back to his Rutland home.

The next day, Rutland experienced a 3.8 magnitude earthquake. Whether this was caused by the simultaneous dropping of residents' jaws, or an impromptu hypercar quarter-mile sprint, remains as yet unconfirmed.

It's the Super Bowl this weekend. That it's the biggest American football game of the season is a small aside: far more important is the Super Bowl's position as huge entertainment extravaganza.

And where there is entertainment, there is advertising. Car companies traditionally slug it out to grab the most headlines with their most extravagant efforts: good job, really, given the millions of dollars a 30 second ad spot costs.

Accordingly, Kia has bagged Bond (well, the old Bond, Pierce Brosnan) for some mild comedy to help sell the new Sorento..

Still in Super Bowl ad-world, Mercedes has thought beyond merely placing a celebrity inside one of its products. Although arguably one half of a children's fable told worldwide is more famous than the man who starred in four of the more forgettable Bond films.

Merc's ad doesn't teach us, as you might expect, that slow and steady wins the race. Instead, we learn that selfie-taking smugness is not cool, but turbocharged V8s and swearing tortoises are.

A poll to find out everyone's online passwords (are we the only ones sensing an evil ulterior motive here?) has found that, if you want to delve into someone's bank account or Facebook galleries, a Ford Mustang is better than Batman.

That's because ‘Mustang' is the 16th most popular password on the internet, ahead of ‘Batman' in 24th place. It's the only car name to feature in the top 25, an achievement Ford seems strangely proud of this week.

And rather than changing said password to something far less obvious (may we suggest ‘Ecosport'?), Ford suggests simply embellishing the word ‘Mustang' with more information, such as your car's paint code or your favourite road trip destination.

"While you should always keep your Mustang-inspired password a secret", Ford says, "wear your appreciation for the iconic pony car proudly and loudly."

Remember the smash-up-a-Lexus Street Fighter bonus round? Well, a martial artist has done something you definitely shouldn't try at home: recreated it in real life.

Click here to see a fighty gent named Paul Wordsworth taking out his rage on an unsuspecting little VW Polo, complete with appropriate sound effects and scoring. Um, yes.

More animals and cars (ceaselessly our favourite combination of things), with news landing this week that a Londoner's Toyota has been nibbled away by a squirrel.

It wasn't a moss-covered old clanger that was advertising itself as an hors d'ouevre, either. It was a brand new Aygo, and it was the only car ‘repeatedly attacked' on the streets of Croydon.

Owner Tony Steeles reckons Toyota's exploration of more eco-friendly materials, using plastics derived from plant elements, led to a cocksure rodent gobbling on his aerial and rubber trim.

Steeles says Toyota has promised that its research and development will investigate whether its cars can be made more rodent-proof. No word on whether it was a red or grey squirrel. Since it prefers Toyotas, we're assuming the latter.

There's been plenty of good news revolving around the car industry of late. After toasting the success of the UK's many car plants last week, it's time to turn our attention to Lamborghini.

The Bolognese supercar maker had a healthy 2014, announcing it hired 192 new people - taking its total workforce to 1,175 - last year, while producing 2,530 cars. 2015 is set to see similar employee investment, with Lambo majoring on employing under 30s, young apprentices in particular.

In fact, Lamborghini has just been voted ‘most desirable company to work for' by Italian college graduates. Nothing to do with never having to work with any fewer than ten cylinders, we're sure...

Questionable celebrity endorsements have always been a mainstay of the car world. And football teams seem a particularly easy direction to head. After all, what bunch of 20-odd year old lads wouldn't want some free cars?

Quite a lot of them, it would seem. Manchester United's squad reportedly left a transporter full of Corvettes to collect dust last year. Arsenal's players seem more game for a tie-up, though. Or maybe their contractual obligations are rather more watertight.

Evidence? Here are some of the Arsenal's young, keen ball-kickers Laurent Koscielny, Mathieu Flamini, David Ospina and Theo Walcott. Standing next to some Citroens.

We imagine they're discussing how successfully (or not) the original DS is reflected in the new DS5, and how the latter may be nice, but depreciation is still a bit of a concern in big French cars so they'd probably buy one with a few miles on it as opposed to brand new. Probably.

Last weekend saw the Rolex 24-hour race take place at Daytona. And full of thrills, spills and lovely racing cars it was too.

What our gallery didn't show you, however, was the bloody aftermath of one of the race's more distressing incidents. Namely, a petrolhead possum - keen to see close-up just what kind of front aero a Porsche 911 utilises at a round-the-clock race - ended up rather dead after bursting through said Porsche's radiator (though miraculously only bending, rather than breaking it).

To add insult to more-than-injury, the possum was mowed down by Andy Lally, a vegan and keen animal lover. Oops. For the purposes of taste, the picture above is the most death-free from Andy's Twitter feed, which you can click through to if you're feeling morbid.

TG suggests Lally should, in future, fit his 911 with a possump guard. Pos-sump. No? Ah, come on...

But not us, we're happy to say. Last week Toyota put out an exceedingly coy teaser about its new ‘RND Concept', with paragraphs of vague and misleading text accompanying the image above.

It was described as a concept with "the potential to transform the look of every vehicle on the road", and one which "will make a valuable contribution to the world we live in".

News websites lapped it up. A wild new sports car to sit above the GT86? The internet was mildly on fire.

A week later, the truth landed. RND is an acronym for Red Nose Day, one of the UK's biggest charity campaigns. The RND Concept? A red nose to stick to the front of your car to mark your support...