Ten things we learned this week: 18 March 2016 edition

And not because of a questionable hashtag or a particularly cringeworthy selfie, however likely they may be. Nope, he appears to have filmed himself while riding his motorbike in Auckland, New Zealand, before posting it on his Snapchat account.

New Zealand, like any sensible country, deems it illegal to use your phone while driving. “If there is clear evidence that a mobile phone has been used to record this footage and it has been recorded by hand, as opposed to from a fixed device, then this would be deemed an offence,” the local police said.

They have declared a lack of evidence against the reigning champ, though, and no further action will be taken. Faced with questioning from a journalist about the incident in a press conference before this weekend’s F1 season opener in Melbourne, Lewis said “I don’t have much of an answer for you, unfortunately.”

We do. Don’t do it, kids.

You probably remember Jag’s “It’s good to be bad” marketing noise when the F-Type arrived.

If you weren’t a fan, then it’s probably best you go and pop the kettle on during the ad breaks for the foreseeable future. Thanks to the new F-Pace, those adverts are back, albeit with a different slogan.

This time, though, we meet who we presume is the criminal mastermind using the likes of Tom Hiddleston and Ben Kingsley as his puppets. It’s none other than British superbrain Stephen Hawking, his Bond villain-like lair only reachable via some snowy switchbacks, and oddly decorated with videos of Terry Grant's F-Pace loop-the-loop.

Watch the video here.

Nissan has made some noises about unveiling something exciting at the New York motor show later this month. It’s accompanied said noises with this shadowy, moody image of what anyone who has access to the internet, a passing knowledge of cars and some eyes will recognise as the back end of a GT-R.

Given it’s been a while since Nissan got jiggy with the spanners and fiddled with the GT-R (and the fact we’re still a few years off the R35’s hybrid replacement) it’s a fair bet you’re looking at a facelifted, revised GT-R with what looks like a new rear wing, and surely even more power.

Current numbers are 542bhp and 466lb ft. Time to plug in the Nismo’s upgraded 592bhp V6, Nissan?

Several members of the TG team have a rather large soft spot for the little Jimny. Suzuki’s daftly named and unexpectedly capable little mud-plugger may lack any form of style, but for them, it more than makes up for it in ground-clambering substance.

Plenty agree, too. It may be 18 years since its introduction, allowing the Jimny to graduate from drinking sneaky cans of cider in the park to partying legally in nightclubs, yet Suzuki continues to sell 1,500 a year in the UK. That’s despite the car having no visible marketing, and its price rising with inflation each and every year.

Celebrating its success, then, is this Jimny Adventure special edition. It harks back to Vitaras of old with a two-tone paint job, but brings itself into the present with satnav and Bluetooth as extras. The price? £14,949, and just 200 will be made.

The Australian police have had a brainwave so elegant, simple and perfect, Ten Things would doff its cork-rimmed hat off to them, if it wore one. That brainwave? If you want to instantly project an image of ‘Do Not Mess’, then it’s best to patrol around in the most obnoxious and no-nonsense car possible.

Which ought to explain why the Victoria police department has just treated itself to around £96k worth of GLE 63 AMG Coupe. The S model, naturally. So that’s 577bhp of bi-turbo V8 fury wrapped up in the most politically incorrect bodyshell possible: the coupe-SUV. Strewth.

So, given Australia’s proud history of V8 muscle and the fact there’s plenty of crim storage space inside, this new purchase almost makes perfect sense. Our only gripe is that, given Australia’s love of Utes, DCI Bruce should have waited a few weeks to see what Mercedes is cooking up next…

That’s right, other police departments of Australia. According to online rumours, the headline act on Mercedes-Benz’s (presumably reinforced) Paris motor show stand will be its planned pick-up truck.

We’ve already seen official sketches, and it seems Mercedes will delve into the toybox of its Nissan alliance partner and borrow bits of the current Navara truck for its mooted ‘X-Class’, which could go on sale as early as next year.

And Mercedes’s naughty reputation for AMG-ing just about everything it makes is about to undergo its sternest test…

Never one to ignore a surprising stat, Ten Things learned this week that just 0.5 per cent of people who receive a parking fine decide to appeal it. That’s despite the second stat: a massive 50 per cent of people who do go to the bother of sending off all the forms actually win their case and don’t have to pay up.

So it’s heartening to know that the Traffic Penalty Tribunal (wow, imagine how much fun their office Christmas party is) has teamed up with complaints specialist Resolver to ensure you’ll no longer have to jump through hoops suspended above laser-shooting sharks to protest your innocence over minor driving misdemeanours.

A new mobile platform has been launched to allow defendants to fight back against over-zealous traffic wardens by uploading photo of video evidence via their smartphone or tablet. It’s like it’s the 21^st century or something.

The initiative is kicking off with Brighton and Hove council, and will go nationwide by year’s end. Appeals at the ready…

Probably a good job, given their paws (do tortoises have paws?) probably can’t operate an iPad very well to appeal any fines.

Yup, spotted this week was what we presume to be a badly labelled disabled bay, but which we deeply hope is actually a parking space especially for our doddering, hard-cased pals. They do drive AMG GTs, after all.

Just don’t go strapping a rucksack to your back and crawling on all fours in order to fraudulently park nearer the supermarket door. That’d be a bit, um, shell-fish, wouldn’t it?

The Lake District national park, in Britain’s north-west, is known for two things: being achingly pretty to look at, and being responsible for some of the wettest holidays known to man. A shoo-in, then, for hire car companies to offer out a car that doesn’t come with doors as standard.

“The Twizy provides tourists with the ideal vehicle in which to explore the area and offers the peace of mind that their visit will have the minimum impact on the environment’s outstanding beauty and its road network,” the bumph reads. “The Twizy’s silent running also ensures that engine noise won’t affect the environment or tourists’ sightseeing experience.”

Eight different locations are offering the tandem electric cars for hire, and, somewhat sensibly, they all appear to have the ‘door’ option ticked…

March 8, you may know, is International Women’s Day. And it falls, appropriately enough, in America’s Women’s History Month. How to pay tribute to this focus on feminist issues if you’re, say, a manufacturer of die-cast toy cars? The answer from Hot Wheels is a limited-edition run of miniature cars inspired by powerful women of the movies.

So, there’s a 1/64^th scale representation of the sort of car Maz Kanata from Star Wars would drive (if spaceships weren’t readily available), plus a Wonder Woman-themed coupe (just in case she forgets where she parked her invisible plane).

There are also two new models paying tribute to Black Widow and the Wasp from the Marvel universe. Because why should Iron Man hog all the supercars?