Ten things we learned this week

This is a BMW i8 racing car. Ergo, it is brilliant. What it isn't, sadly, is real, being the work of one of our favourite internet doodlers, Jon Sibal.

But we do hope it's pricked up the ears of the appropriate people in Munich. It looks bloody good. It also looks very plausible.

Being, y'know, not real, there are no specs to throw at you other than the 357bhp/4.4secs/155mph associated with the road-going, TG Car of the Year i8. But Jon has gone to town with his electronic felt tips, designing a huge, child-eating front splitter - complete with lovely little dive planes - and a mahoosive rear wing.

How much do you want to see one of these battle Vantages and Huracans in GT3 racing? And how much more do you want to be the one doing battle?

Pic credit: Jon Sibal

While we're on glorious racing supercars, may we wistfully drift back to 1997, and this utterly wonderful McLaren?

It's the F1 XP GT, a road-legal homologation version of the stunning F1 Long Tail racer. Its extended rear bodywork and various exterior adornments ensure it's even more imposing than the 241mph F1 it was based upon. At the time, it was the fastest car in the world, don't forget.

And such glorious imagery as resurfaced because the car you see here is headed for the Geneva motor show. Indeed, not content with unveiling both the P1 GTR and 675 LT, McLaren is going for a triple-barrelled assault on Ferrari and Lambo. Consider us on its stand mere seconds after the show hall doors have swung open.

If you've been on the internet this week, you'll be aware of several things. An old lady suffered a fall at the Brit Awards. There's a dress that no one knows the colour of. And some llamas have caused havoc in America.

What's the latter got to do with cars? Well, they've been cantering riot on Arizona roads, causing sufficent carnage to prompt the local telly station to send up its helicopter, a move more frequently associated with high-speed car chases.

As is the way nowadays, it was quickly picked up by Twitter users. What ensued was global viewing of one of the less dramatic chopper chases of recent years. But certainly one of the more amusing.

We quote the tweet of tech writer Owen Williams: "I am watching a police llama chase live on the internet. What a time to be alive."

If you've ever wondered what sort of person drives a Nissan GT-R - 0-60mph in 2.7 seconds, lest we forget - and finds it too slow, then wonder no longer. The first of the UK's 24 Nismo GT-Rs has been delivered to its owner, Nick Coombes.

"Once you've owned a GT-R nothing else will do", says Nick. "This is my third GT-R and as soon as I knew the GT-R Nismo was being made I knew I had to have one."

After whipping off the cover, Coombes then had the living bejeezus scared out of him around Thruxton race track by Jann Mardenborough, TG's favourite computer gamer turned Le Mans racer. Jealous?

It's fair to say the telly boys didn't have a huge amount of success making ambulances out of things that aren't ambulances. But then a Porsche or hearse were never the most obvious places to start. A four-wheel-drive, go-anywhere pick-up truck? Much better.

VW's got it right, sticking an emergency room on the back of an Amarok, in order to treat patients in hard-to-reach places. There's even a snorkel so that it can wade through a couple of feet of water to get there. This, or the lethal Hambulance?

It's a firm favourite here in Ten Things land: the footballer-standing-by-car news. And we're noticing intrinsic links between the teams and car brands that unite. Take Arsenal and Citroen for instance: quite French, never perform quite to their potential, but plenty of flair to enjoy if you're a neutral outsider.

So who would Burnley - gritty, honest, shorn of the big-money cynicism of rivals, but currently at the wrong end of the table - team up with? Why, MG of course...

Battling BMW, Audi and Mercedes is a tough ask. Nonetheless, Nissan made the decision a few years ago to bring its posher iteration - Infiniti - to Europe to try and replicate its success in the US. As your eyes have probably told you, though, Infiniti isn't yet shifting cars at an especially rapid rate. The outside lanes of British motorways aren't, you will notice, chock-full of Q50 DRLs.

Sponsoring a top F1 team ought to help raise sales, but Infiniti hasn't stopped there. It has made a song. With a video. A very hypnotising video...

We'd explain in depth about how all of the song's sounds and lyrics are all made using various Infiniti parts and functions, but we've not got time. Our legs are involuntarily walking us to the nearest Infiniti dealer. If only we knew were it actually was.

Hashtag first world problems: you've got a gorgeous old Porsche 911 with an impeccably maintained period interior. But every time you take it out on an unbelievably gratifying road trip, you have to sucker a clunky TomTom to the windscreen like us mere mortals in normal, less seductive cars.

But this particular #firstworldproblem has been solved by Porsche's Classic team. The sympathetically designed unit you see above will fit into 911s from the early 60s to the mid 90s, and it incorporates a 3.5-inch touchscreen and smartphone connectivity. It costs 1184 euros, or a smidge over £850. Small-fry compared to the spiralling values of classic Porsches.

Our favourite quote from Porsche, though, is this: "Numerous trial journeys have been undertaken in Europe to test the country-specific navigation." Road-tripping old 911s in the name of research. Sounds arduous, doesn't it?

Well, a drawing of it. We'll see it for the first time at the Geneva motor show next week, and it won't be alone. It will be attached to the new Agera RS, a harder-cored version of the already pretty hardcore Agera R, with tech likely to be borrowed from the 1341bhp One:1 ‘megacar'.

And despite Koenigsegg being diminutive in size compared to the rest of its show hall foes, it will have a second car on show too, the Regera. Little is known about that yet, but rumours suggest a hybrid hypercar to scrap with the P1, 918 and LaFerrari. Appetite whetted?

Thanks to the Bentley Bentayga and Jag's F-Pace, we've already crowned 2015 the year of the silly SUV name. And Rolls-Royce, having confirmed at last that it's joining the posh-roader gang (with the poshest of the lot, we'd wager), has also codenamed its new model ‘Cullinan'. It's unclear whether this is the name that will make production, or whether that will be weirder yet.

Since you ask, Cullinan is the name of the 3106-carat diamond that holds the title of largest in the world. Perhaps that's a clue as to a) how shiny and b) how big the new Roller will be...