Ten Things We Learned This Week

It's been just under a week since Bernie held the 2014 F1 season's wrap party. And as Sebastian Vettel's pass for Red Bull HQ has been invalidated, and he's got some downtime before his induction at Team Scuderia next year, like any studious German teenager he's gone and got himself a job to help pay for his parent's Christmas presents.

Going undercover as a German-speaking, dungarees wearing American hillbilly, Sebastian recently tried his hands at being a mechanic at a local Infiniti car dealership all in the name of internet virility and fulfilling contract terms.

Top Gear's German language skills hover somewhere between ‘ambitious' and ‘non-existent', so we can't tell you whether this is actually funny or painfully forced, but one thing's for sure - that Vettel lad can drive a bit.

Watch the video here

Warning: contains German humour

Good news this week for part-time Wolverine and full-time Australian Hugh Jackman.

To celebrate the release of X-Men: Days of Future Past on DVD, a Kia Sorento has been designed especially for Hugh and his X-Men buddies.

Complete with adamantium-clawed bumpers, black paint and a Wolverine-esque wing, the ‘X-Car' is the perfect mode of transport for a money-minded, family-orientated mutant superhero.

Now watch Hugh take to the TG track in our Reasonably Priced Car...

Officially, this Skoda Fabia R5 is a concept car bound for next week's Essen Motor Show. But don't be surprised if you see something that looks very similar but fitted with a 265bhp 1.6-litre turbocharged engine, coupled to a five-speed sequential manual gearbox and weighing about 1,230kg blatting through the stages in the European Rally Championship next year.

Now, can we have a road variant please, Skoda?

Though we imagine it won't be a very amusing tale. News reaches us that a man named Li was struck down by a car while attempting to cross a road in Kunshan City, in east China's Jiangsu province.

Having been knocked down, Li was then mowed down again by another car within just ten seconds.

It gets worse. Some locals attempted to help the stricken Li, when another car screeched to a halt directly in front of him. Unfortunately the car behind this car couldn't brake in time, and so smashed into the car facing Li, pushing it onto our befallen hero.

Reports tell us Li suffered several leg and rib fractures, but is recovering well. Chin up, fella.

Watch the video here

We've long warned you about the dangers of driverless cars and how they'll bring about the End Of All Things, but now Google is getting serious. Apparently during tests in California, vehicle testers have admitted that they needed to make the cars more human-like in order to survive the mean streets. For human-like, read ‘pushy irritants'.

Speaking to the San Jose Mercury News, Nathaniel Fairfield, a technical leader on the project, said: "We found that we actually need to be - not aggressive - but assertive. If you're always yielding and conservative, basically everybody will just stomp on you all day."

To quote Morpheus from The Matrix: fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony...

11 reasons to fear autonomous cars

In a probably-not-that-revelatory-revelation, Renault has confirmed to TopGear.com that future RS models would likely go hybrid.

The company told us that with its involvement in Formula E and experience in the EV market should make a hybrid RS model a sure thing.

You can read the full story here, but for now, Top Gear is hoping for a full, banzai, McLaren P1 style hybrid Twingo. Boost an' all.

Seems like Webber will have an F1 buddy alongside him at La Sarthe next year, as Force India F1 confirmed that driver Nico Hulkenberg will race with Porsche at the legendary endurance race next year.

Not only that, Nico will also pilot the monster Porsche at the Six Hours of Spa in May: the weekend in between the Bahrain and Chinese Formula One GPs. So he won't be too busy, then.

Rumours that Nico will race in BTCC, DTM, the Clio Cup championship and Hammond's People Carrier race series next year remain unconfirmed.

As we recently found out, a racetrack is the only real place to stretch the legs of a hypercar without attracting the rozzers.

But rocking up at Brands Hatch on a Wednesday evening's ‘Run What Ya Brung' event in a £1.15 million, 950bhp hyper-hybrid LaFerrari might be classed as a bit ‘showy' by the have-a-go heroes in their Honda Civics.

That's why the Ultracar Sports Club has been formed by SRO Motorsports. Grafted onto next year's Blancpain Endurance Series events at Paul Ricard and Misano, it offers the world's minted the opportunity of a hypercar track day. Yes, hypercar track day.

If you've got a P1, LaFerrari, 918, Aston One-77, Lamborghini Veneno, Koenigsegg One:1, Veyron, any of the Ferrari XX models, a Pagani Zonda R or any other super fast, super rare and super expensive supercar, you're in. If you've got a daggy Astra with aftermarket rims, you're very much not.

Pirelli will even supply spare tyres so you can initiate Maximum Attack Mode. Just make sure you don't put it into the barriers: with such a selection of cars, there'll be more than a few camera phones videoing everything from the stands.

In an era of small capacity, turbocharged engines, SRT's pyrotechnic 6.2-litre, 707bhp supercharged V8 ‘Hellcat' Hemi is worthy of applause.

Slotted in the heart of the Dodge Challenger, it spells the most powerful production muscle car in the world. When the same engine is transplanted into the Dodge Charger, it makes the world's fastest four-door saloon. We love it.

But if said V8 was to explode, it'd probably look like the image above. But as long as it'd done less than 100,000 miles, or was under five years old, it wouldn't matter: the engine would still be covered under warranty.

God bless America.