Ten things we learned this week: 30 October 2015 edition

Still resisting Uber, your inner traditionalist continuing to hail traditional cabs? This may sway you. If you’re in New York, that is.

Uber is deploying a fleet of especially exciting cars – including a BMW i8, Tesla Model S and McLaren’s LaFerrari-fighting hypercar – as a promotional stunt as part of a tie-up with a TV show.

So for the last few days, a handful of lucky Uber users have been greeted by a petrol-electric supercar rather than a Prius. And as if riding through New York streets in a million-dollar McLaren wasn’t enough, the rides were free.

It follows a similar stunt by BMW last week. Would such a campaign in the UK hammer another nail into the black cab’s coffin?

“I think I would make a very good James Bond villain,” hollers wee Felipe, as he drives the Jaguar C-X75 stunt car from Spectre.

Problem is, it’s quite hard to take him seriously when he’s a) belting out an appalling rendition of the James Bond signature music and b) looking like a child joyriding his dad’s car.

Massa looks rather adept at smoking around in the big Jag, though, and we’ve no doubt he’d make a solid stunt driver. But a scary baddie?

Felipe, Fernando is scarier than you.

Speaking of little ‘uns in Jags: the British carmaker has launched a new driving experience. And rather than let, y’know, adults bomb about in spangly new cars, this one’s for the kids.

Yep. If you’re aged 11-17 and have dreams of touring Britain’s bypasses between regional strategy meetings, then get writing your Christmas list: Jaguar will let you drive a diesel XE.

We jest, of course. The idea is to get the young ‘uns accustomed to cars and roads – a closed-off course is designed to mimic proper road systems – before they jump into a car, a stepping stone to help make driving lessons that bit more effective.

“The XE is a great car for this,” says the man in charge of the scheme, Mark Cameron. “It offers the very latest in technology and innovation, and is also ideal for helping teach young people about environmentally responsible driving.”

We’re sure the kids are gagging to play Assistant Regional Manager.

We’d argue a monstrously winged Aventador is a better way to get kids into driving from an early age. But perhaps that’s why Ten Things has thus far failed to secure a job in the Department for Transport.

If you’re of adult age, though, you can hire a Lambo Aventador SV in which to tour Monaco. Rather than being from the posh row in the Hertz car park, though, it’s an option from a company called AAA, which specialises in hire cars that aren’t Kia Picantos or Fiat Bravos.

The SV is one of its more exciting options, the list also including Ferrari F12s, BMW i8s and even a gaggle of Mansory products. You’ll need at least £1,000 a day to secure something properly special, though, that SV approaching £3,000…

News of the things-you-might-prefer-not-hear-from-the-latest-F1-champion variety now, as Lewis Hamilton – Britain’s first back-to-back winner of Formula 1 trophies – has declared cars aren’t his big interest. Oh.

Speaking to Radio 4’s Today programme – very high-brow – Lewis revealed he’s been teaching himself to play piano in his spare time, before declaring “music is really my favourite thing.” Yep.

“Above cars, music is what I love doing most,” F1’s current car racing champion said.

“I really feel like music is the key to the soul,” Lewis, pictured above with fellow pianist Elton John, continued.

Your thoughts?

As if the annual drumming of your door as the local yoofs demand confectionary wasn’t arduous enough, it appears PR departments are latching on to the marketing potential for Halloween. Oh good.

Following last week’s McLaren 650S actual Spider comes the ‘Horrific H-0WL3R’, a car that offends fans of cars and grammar. As enthusiasts of both, we’re practically apoplectic.

It’s the evil work of Warranty Direct, which has combined the most recurrent problems from its policy database to concoct a cocktail of car repair woe. Among its components are the Mitsubishi Outlander’s engine, the Mazda 5’s suspension and quite a lot of the Chevrolet Tacuma.

Strangely, though, the end result ends up looking rather more coherent than ‘Britain’s perfect car’…

The Tesla Model S may be something of a tech tour-de-force at the moment, but the Californian company is yet to plug the gap (see what we did there?) left by its inaugural model, the Roadster.

Enter Detroit Electric, which has built its first car in, um, Leamington Spa. The SP:01 is, we think it’s fair to say, quite Tesla-Roadster-inspired, given it shoehorns an electric drivetrain into a Lotus Elise body.

The SP:01 uses a 281bhp electric motor, channelled to the rear wheels through an optional six-speed manual gearbox, something rather unique in the world of EVs.

The first car to whirr silently from the production line is headed for export, with European prices for the SP:01 yet to be announced. Would you?

The boffins at Audi’s niche investigation team (for in a world of diesel-powered performance SUVs, there must be one) are surely kicking themselves. This, boys and girls, is an RS4 trailer.

Born in the Netherlands, it does little to dispel myths about the substances consumed there, and their after-effects. A proud owner of a grey Audi RS4, upon requiring more space than his turbocharged estate could provide, simply bought another. And then converted it into a matching trailer…

Firm details on how this happened are scant: the proportions look too perfect for this to be a home-crafted replica, so we’re pinning our hopes on the owner saving a post-understeery-crash RS4 to create a show-stopping accessory.

So says a survey, anyway. And no, it wasn’t just the TG office that was polled.

A company called Wunelli has studied nearly 9,000 journeys carried out over a three-year period, concluding that speed cameras are creating ‘braking blackspots’.

You’ve probably been there: a speed camera appears in view and you instinctively prod the brake pedal.

If you’re nodding along, you are far from alone. Wunelli reckons ‘hard braking activity’ increases by a curiously precise average of 689 per cent in the area around fixed speed cameras, with one camera on the eastbound M4 near Brentford seeing a 1,140 per cent increasing in panicked pedal stabs.

The survey was further reaching than that, with a number of less than shocking conclusions also being unearthed: people speed more in the early hours of the morning than rush hour, and speeding is more frequent in the Scottish highlands than gridlocked central London.

Our jaws remain undropped.

Datsun: makers of the legendary Fairlady Z, but also a potentially slanderous term if you want to rub the GT-R community up the wrong way.

However, last year, after a 27-year hiatus, the Datsun badge was reintroduced by Nissan’s CEO Carlos Ghosn as a budget Dacia-like brand for emerging markets.

But the firm has bigger plans, as it now wants to introduce emerging markets to the financially fruitful world of the crossover. As a teaser, Datsun showed off this Go-Cross Concept after the Tokyo motor show. We’re pretty sure someone must’ve got their dates mixed up.

The sharp-lined and confident crossover could run off the Renault Kwid’s platform, but is yet to be green-lit by the big bosses of the Renault–Nissan Alliance.

But more importantly, people of India, Indonesia, Russia, South Africa and Nepal, do you want it?