Ten things we learned this week: 1 April 2016 edition

In a Porsche dealership, no less.

Reports have suggested that the 500bhp car rolled over the edge of the bank while undergoing minor work at Porsche’s base in Amsterdam earlier this week.   

Photographer Nick van Veldhuijzen, who captured the accident on camera, later witnessed the car being winched out with a crane.

Apparently damage was minimal, although naturally the owner had to be called in to inspect his moistened bonnet. We certainly don’t envy the person who had to make that phone call...

It just goes to show: you can lead a Porsche to water but you cannot make it sink.

Image credit: Nick van Veldhuijzen

The US manufacturers have paid homage to baseball team Kansas City Royals, who won the World Series in 2015, by announcing a limited run of F-150 MVP editions based on the XLT version of the pickup.

300 models will be built at the Kansas City Assembly Plant following a suggestion from a previous customer that the company revisit its Ford Ranger MVP from 1986.

“Like our manufacturing team members at Kansas City Assembly Plant, the Kansas City Royals are a great example of what terrific teamwork can accomplish,” said Gary Johnson, Ford’s vice president for North America manufacturing.

Ford’s statement failed to mention how much the special edition would cost. Not even a ball park figure.

And no, we don’t mean they’ve built a car for children as passengers. In this two-seater, the youngsters go behind the wheel.

Really. Young Driver, who claim to have given over 300,000 driving lessons to children aged 10 and up, have designed the car above for the purpose of teaching anyone under 10 how to drive.

This car has a top speed of 10mph and comes with a remote control so parents can intervene, but don’t worry: they’re not designed for public roads, so you won’t be held up behind one any time soon.

Kim Stanton, director of Young Driver, said: “This is not a toy, it is very definitely a small car! We’ve had children involved throughout its development, working with the designers and engineers to ensure that it provides a realistic driving experience.”

She added that the “ultimate aim is to give youngsters a greater insight in terms of road safety” and that the car would teach them to tackle “day to day situations like junctions, passing cyclists and reversing”.

We’d take this over PE any day.

In slightly more alarming child-driver news, a Freedom of Information request filed by the RAC has unearthed the fact that nearly a thousand drivers under the age of 17 were caught behind the wheel in 2014.

A 21% rise on figures from 2012, 961 boys and 30 girls were found to be driving on British roads illegally having not having reached the age required to apply for a provisional license.

The youngest of those caught was just 11-years-old.

Don’t do it kids: getting your parents to drive you everywhere is one of the beauties of being a teenager...

Obviously this isn’t the real Batman, who has been much too busy trolling cinema-goers in a Jeep Renegade this week to bother taking an interest in a Lambo.

This is in fact YouTubeist Josh Paler Lin, who has unleashed a torrent of japery on a handful of Uber users who were expecting a quiet journey in a Toyota Prius. How wrong they were.

After setting up a false account on the taxi hailing service, Lin, in full character as the DC Comics hero, proceeded to thrill his passengers with a series of quick bursts in the 217mph supercar.

You can watch the video in its entirety, here.

He’s the taxi driver Uber deserves, but not the one it ne- wait, we did this joke last month. Sorry.

Image credit: Josh Paler Lin

41-year-old Dale Earnhardt Jr, whose father and grandfather raced in NASCAR before him, has said he will donate his brain to CTE researchers when he dies.

The American driver suffered from concussion following a 40G accident in 2012, a diagnosis that wasn’t made until scans following another crash just six weeks later.

Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy was the subject of Will Smith’s most recent film, Concussion.

On Twitter, Earnhardt said candidly: “What use is it to you at that point [death]?”

Last week, driving.co.uk told the story of 50-year-old Worthing resident Lisa Adams, whose Vauxhall Zafira caught fire during a school-run last month.

The fire brigade had to be called out to deal with the blaze, which began just minutes after Adams had got out of the car to collect her son from school.

What makes the story interesting is that it happened in a vehicle that had been checked by Vauxhall just three months beforehand as part of a 240,000 Zafira recall sparked by a string of fire-related incidents.

Vauxhall has admitted that they are investigating a handful of cases where models that have been given the green light have still burst into flames.

In exhilarating car door news, Hyundai has filed a patent in the United States for a gullwing door on an unspecified RV.

The application reads: “If a door of the RV is largely opened like a wing body of a truck, the sense of openness can be significantly increased at the time of loading or unloading a large freight on or from the vehicle.”

Don’t get too excited though. The document also says that the “door is hard and inconvenient to open” and “low in efficiency related with usage of the door in that it is cumbersome”.

Hyundai may need to revisit the drawing board...

And finally, pictures have emerged of a superb hand-built cot which has been designed to look like a Land Cruiser.

The excellent piece of handiwork, reportedly that of Australian father Luke Madderom, features a main sleeping area as well as changing bay and two storage draws in the bonnet.

TG will henceforth refer to it as the Land-of-nod Cruiser.

Image credit: Scott Brownlee/Luke Madderom