Ten things we learned this week

Thanks to the often taste-free declarations of wealth that sojourn the swankier ends of London, a diamond-encrusted car isn't quite as news-worthy as it really should be.

It does retain some shock value, though, when it's a Ford Kuga. With a million-pound price tag. Perhaps our brains have been melted by the Geneva motor show lights this week, but we really can't process what's going on over on the Jennings Ford dealership website.

Erroneous Photoshopping? Check. Whimsical finance figures? Tick. Eye-clawingly odd marketing exercise that puts us off ever buying a Fiesta ST? Uncomfortably close to it...

The 2015 Geneva motor show has been a belter, and you can peruse its many performance car stars here. Three of those are McLaren's 675 LT, and Porsche's motorsport division specials, the Cayman GT4 and 911 GT3 RS.

Want the LT? All 500 are already sold. GT4? Not a chance in the next two years. GT3 RS? While no production numbers have been revealed, one potential owner we spoke to explained he's in a 20-person lottery for the two his local dealer will acquire.

Get saving to pay a hefty premium for a nearly-new example of any of them...

Solace for spurned 675 LT buyers comes in the form of McLaren's new ‘Sports Series' supercar, its cheaper entry point, which will be officially unveiled at next month's New York motor show.

We've already seen way too many teaser images and tidbits of spec, but we'll recount the basics: a circa-500bhp twin-turbo V8, rear-wheel drive, carbon tub. Excited?

If you're even a smidgen like us, you'll spend dozy afternoons daydreaming of slinging Merc's magnificently mad 6x6 G-Wagen across undulating sand dunes, throwing power between its three axles to moderate ludicrously large powerslides.

So too, it appears, does Kahn Engineering, slightly infamous doer-upper of Land Rovers and Range Rovers. Meet the Flying Huntsman, its Defender with added axle and oddly elongated conk.

We're struggling to find words, so help us out by putting some in the comments box below. Play nice...

And so finishes the greatest line ever published on the internet. Five solar-powered robots, with lights, cameras and gesticulating arms, have been ‘employed' by Congolese police to control mischievous drivers in the capital city of Kinshasa. And apparently it's working.

Should Beastie Boys' Intergalactic video gain any serious exposure in Congo, though, we fear driver obedience levels will fall quickly...

Emerging straight from the school of transparent fibs with top grades is Flavio Roberto de Souza. He's the judge presiding over a case of Eike Batista, a Brazilian billionaire standing accused of dodgy trading.

Or should we say was presiding. Upon ordering the confiscation of Batista's numerous supercars, de Souza then bagged one of them - an unspecified Porsche - for his evening commute home. His excuse? The police had run out of parking spaces.

It won't surprise you to learn a new judge is being appointed...

That's probably not the angle the government is aiming for, but as with all sops towards the motorist, we're looking at it as glass-half-full-as-we-can-muster, as the UK's political parties scratch around for votes in the lead-up to May's general election.

"We're ending the war on the motorist!" were the claims this week. Significantly lower fuel taxes? Reduced dancing between bus lane, red light and speed cameras?

Err, no. A bit of leeway if you're late back to your car when it's in a council-run car park, with a ten-minute buffer where a penalty charge won't be slapped on your windscreen. We'll take what we're given, but the swingometer is unlikely to have swung much off kilter just yet.

Or rather he hasn't flatly denied the potential for one. See, Hisayuki Yagi, project leader of the new Civic Type-R, sidled around in the GT86's drifty granddad, the Toyota AE86, in his yoof. And it appears he rather enjoyed it.

"When I was young, I drove an AE86, so I can fully understand that such cars are really fun and the quality and performance of such cars," Yagi-San told TG in Geneva. "I was a student when I bought that car and it was an ideal car even I could afford. That's the kind of car I would like to have today."

What chances a VTEC-propelled rear-drive funster?

The rally-inspired Ford Escort Mexico is a bona fide classic, a slidey little rear-drive hot hatch of yore with coolness gushing from its every pore. The equally classic, equally compact Richard Hammond says so, too.

It's so desirable that you'll need a small fortune to buy a Mexico now, despite that humble little Escort badge. And if you haven't got a small fortune? Why, just get hold of a Land Rover Defender and ram-raid your way to Mexico ownership.

That was the heavy-handed approach of Surrey car thieves, the audacity of which you'll see in the video here. Police are seeking any links to the missing Escort - reg plate DAD 422K - which is still AWOL.

Despite the current fad for posh, expensive SUVs - that's you, Bentley Bentayga and unnamed-Rolls-4x4 - we're delighted to report Ferrari won't be getting in on the act.

Speaking at the Geneva show, new Ferrari boss Sergio Marchionne stated that he doesn't expect to see an SUV - or saloon - in the Maranello line-up in the foreseeable future. "I think for SUVs and four-doors, the answer is no," Marchionne said. "The structure of the portfolio is pretty well set."

Marchionne also confirmed that, despite increasingly tight emissions regulations, Ferrari's signature V12 engine will survive to 2020 and beyond. "My expectation is that the 12-cylinder will continue to form part of our portfolio," he told us. "The 12 cylinder is pretty well preserved, but that doesn't mean new technology won't be brought to bear on the 12-cylinder..."

Does that mean the F12's successor could be a LaFerrari-type V12 hybrid? Quite the thought, isn't it?