Ten things we learned this week: 17 June 2016 edition

That’s about all there is to this story, which saw the all-new DB11 and James Bond’s wheels from Spectre, the DB10, parked up alongside each other on the edge of Moscow’s Red Square.

But as well as displaying some overt spy adventure connotations, it’s also our best opportunity yet to compare the styling of both cars. Naturally the production-spec DB11 looks a little fussier than the film-world-only DB10.

We’ll leave the vote to you, though. Which Aston would you want to tear away from the Kremlin in?

“It will be faster on a racetrack than even the SLS Black Series,” said AMG boss Tobias Moers when we asked him about the more hardcore AMG GT earlier in the year.

The car in question is the Mercedes AMG GT R, and this week we learned that it will a) debut next week in time for the Goodwood Festival of Speed, and b) be green. It will have a fixed rear spoiler and something in the region of 600bhp. We also suspect it will be quite vocal. Stay tuned…

Russia has all the best quirky traffic incidents, the infamous ghost car amongst them. To the list you can now add this, the runaway Russian robot.

The robot in question escaped from a science lab (oh God, the uprising has started hasn’t it?), after it was being taught how to move independently but an errant gate left open. Have none of these people heeded the warnings from the movies?

Houdini, as we have named it, travelled around 50 metres onto a nearby street before running out of battery and having to be wheeled out the way of traffic. It ended well on this occasion, but our robots-taking-over-the-world fears have been done no good at all…

In an effort to prove the weest Land Rover – the Discovery Sport – still has all the requisite ability to wear the badge, its maker gave it a rather OTT task this week. Towing a train 60 times its weight, no less.

And the littlest Disco did alright, towing the 100-tonne locomotive for over six miles in the Rhine region of Switzerland. Impressive given its certified towing weight is a far smaller 2,500kg.

The only tweaks over standard were a set of additional rail wheels to act as stabilisers; its 178bhp diesel engine and suite of traction control electronics were all standard, apparently, while the car had Land Rover’s various trailer towing tech on board.

Gives a whole new meaning to taking your car on track, eh?

Well, erm, yes. Mirren – whose career is rich in BAFTAs, Golden Globes, Emmys and a whole lot more – has been confirmed as part of the Fast 8 cast.

“I've always rather loved driving,” she told Elle. “I said, 'I'll be in it, but only if I'm allowed to drive if I do drive in it.'”

“I like very serious films, I love foreign films, and I love big, fun movies – as long as they're well made and they've got good scripts. That's the most important thing.”

Reckon she’ll get that with Fast 8?

Dubai’s police force is known for its rather committed array of patrol cars, and it appears they’ve been put to very good use. It’s been announced this week that 81 vehicles have been seized for reckless driving, some of them for street racing at speeds up to 186mph.

The haul was announced, of all places, on the Dubai Police Facebook page, which said “His Excellency Major General Khamis Mattar Al Muzainah, Commander-in-chief of Dubai Police, said that Dubai traffic patrols tracked a number of reckless drivers and seized 81 vehicles mainly on Al Aweer St. and Al Khor St.

“H.E Al Muzainah said that respecting traffic laws and regulations is a reflection of the person’s respect for himself and other road users.” There you have it, kids.

We like Lego and we love cars, making the recently launched Technic Porsche 911 GT3 RS something we’d all deeply love to procrastinate with.

It’d create an awful lot of work avoidance though, it emerges. This week has seen a speedy time-lapse video of the model’s build land online. And it’s, um, 25 minutes long. Yikes.

But then this is a model with a working PDK gearbox, and proper suspension. It’s no mere toy…

…whereas this Lego model appears to be more whimsical. It’s not a nerdy Technic set, for starters, and its attention to detail levels have certainly been cranked down a notch.

That’s not to say we don’t want a surfboard-clad Lego VW Beetle in our lives. Quite the opposite.

This new 1,167-piece kit looks a bundle of fun, and at £69.99, it’s also around a third of the price of that Porsche. Is it too early to write our Christmas list?

Been watching the new TG TV rallycross car getting air with celebrities on board, and fancied a go yourself? If you live in Minnesota, in America’s Midwest, then that could be a lot easier than you think.

This week saw one of its highways buckle under heat, the result being a near-two-foot tall ramp which led to unsuspecting drivers taking off, and rather a lot of them too. You can see the action unfold on this traffic camera footage.

We suspect some of the drivers are a little above the road’s 55mph speed limit, judging by how much air they actually gain, while others sticking to the law manage to slow down and avoid any wannabe rally driver shenanigans.

And we don’t mean a crappy four-door Escort from the 1980s. Nope, this is a version of the Orion spacecraft that will eventually take human beings to Mars.

It took a short road trip this week, travelling 25 miles on the Interstate 45 from the Johnson Space Center to downtown Houston, where it is on display for curious space lovers to have a poke around.

It’s bloody big too, as you can see by just how un-snugly it fits on the back of this huge articulated flatbed. If you’re looking at booking a one-way ticket to the red planet, you might just travel in something like this. It'll likely fare better than a rusty old Ford saloon.

Picture: Orion Spacecraft