Ten things we learned this week

Regular Ten Things readers will be well aware of our animals-in-cars appreciation. This is taking it to a new and potentially dangerous level, though: dogs driving cars, we love, but dogs stuck in car engine bays give us the heebie-jeebies.

Still, you'll be as delighted as us to know that Woody the Bedlington Terrier is fine and dandy after his inadvertent exploration of a Vauxhall Corsa's gizzards, though it did take a visit from Plymouth fire brigade to ensure his safe escape.

And we have Woody (who is, we have been assured, of canine rather than ovine heritage) - and the Plymouth Herald - to thank for one of the most jocular headlines we've read in months: ‘Dog freed from car engine by Plymouth firefighters after cat chase goes wrong'. Wonderful stuff.

Until this week, unanimous office agreement on cars has been reached on perhaps only three occasions in TG history, most recently with the Cayman GT4.

Enter the Honda S660, the motoring equivalent of a small golden retriever puppy. Adorable and looking like it'll be endless fun to play with, we're all a bit smitten.

But there's something even more enticing, and that's Mugen's performance version. ‘Performance' might not be the right word when tweaks to its 63bhp, 660cc engine are limited to a new oil filter.

But just look at it! The Mugen S660's diminutive spoilers and pretend air vents give off the same vibe as that little puppy baring its minimal teeth and pretending to growl, something we mean entirely as a compliment. We need a version of this in the UK...

Further evidence that small and sweet really are synonyms comes via this video. This, boys and girls, is a third-scale model of the flat-six boxer engine you'll normally find residing in the rump of a Porsche 911.

In the age of 3D printing and the like, your jaw might remain undropped. But this is no recent creation; it was built 40 years ago by a Porsche-loving precision instrument maker from Holland, using original factory drawings to make his own working flat-six.

Watch the video, with the sound cranked up, and try to fight your smile. You'll fail. Can we put one in a Honda S660, please?

Lotus has had its fair share of troubles in the past few years, and sadly much of its marketing in that time has had a whiff of pointing to the horizon and shouting "look over there!" before running in the opposite direction.

And the PR campaign for its new Evora 400 has made us squirm in our spinny office chairs even more than normal. This week has not only seen a Daniel Craig lookalike ambushed by pretend paparazzi on April Fool's day, but the advent of a face-clawing online game, too.

The premise of this ‘agility game' is that if you aren't coordinated enough to play for seven straight seconds without defeat, you can't buy an Evora 400. No wonder the Cayman GT4 is already sold out.

The Peugeot 208 has been facelifted. Not big news in itself, especially given it ticks all the usual ‘sharper headlights' and ‘neater bumpers' boxes without drama.

You can feel some of the changes, though, via new textured paint. Using ‘fine particles of silica and micro-balloons of polyamide' (nope, us neither), it intends to give the look of matt paint but without any of the high-maintenance downsides. And at £645, it's about the same cash as you'll typically spend on metallic or pearlescent paint.

Is it a new concept though? We've already experienced old Pug 205s with even bubblier paint, particularly around the sills and wheel arches...

Or £51 a minute. Which translates into £3082 an hour, a slightly staggering 474 times the UK minimum wage.

That's according to reports on Hamilton's new contract with Mercedes, which was ‘99.6 per cent complete' as we put fingers to keyboard. It helps Hamo keep pace with fellow big names Fernando Alonso and Seb Vettel, though it translates as precisely half the earnings of football's highest paid ball-kicker and dummy-spitter, Cristiano Ronaldo.

All that money, yet apparently Lewis can't go round a corner while being spoken to by his engineer...

If you've nipped on Google Maps to search for an address this week, you may have then lost the rest of your afternoon. And all because of Pacman.

The cheery little pill-popper has certainly made a dent in TG productivity this week, and it's all thanks to a new button in the bottom left corner able to turn the maps of familiar locations into a new game level.

If you're still reading this, and have resisted the urge to immediately type in your home address to have a go at avoiding ghosts on your route to the pub, you've a much stronger will than us.

Tie one end of string round tooth. Tie the other round the handle of an open door. Slam door with all your might. This is the tried, tested, entirely brutal method of removing a child's wobbly tooth that's been used in sitting rooms up and down the land for decades.

If we were to criticise, though, it's a bit lacking in burnouts. And V8 noise. Enter this American dad, who apparently prefers hastily slamming a gas pedal to a door, using his gargling muscle car to annoy dentists the US over.

Good parenting?

Let's hope the pencils are down and the designer glasses have been carefully folded and put somewhere safe, as it's all kicking off in car designer land.

It's all started because of the new Lincoln Continental, above. Notice anything familiar about it? Bentley's design chief Luc Donckerwolke certainly did, Car Design News catching a rather sarcastic comment he made on Facebook shortly after the Continental's unveiling. "I would have called it Flying Spur concept and kept the four round lights," snapped Donckerwolke.

Does he have a point? We'd been more taken by the familiarity of the Continental's rear end to Audi's recent Prologue concept...

In the league of special editions, the VW Beetle must surely only sit behind the Mazda MX-5 and Bugatti Veyron. With each of those recently gaining a new paint'n'kit version of late, VW has seen fit to play catch up. With four Beetle special concepts.

This week's New York show has played host to (left to right) the Beetle Denim, R-Line, Pink and Wave.

The Denim, surprise surprise, pays homage to jeans (and it's not the first Beetle to do so, either). The Pink rather does what it says on the special edition badge, while the Wave takes its inspiration from American surfing culture.

Of most interest to us, naturally, is the R-Line, which twins the Golf GTI's 217bhp 2-litre turbo engine with a 14mm wider body and stocky 20in wheels. And whisper it, but we think it looks rather tidy...