We get lots of requests to do videos, but we generally don’t waste time churning out boring nonsense. If you haven’t heard already, we drove a McLaren MP4-12C recently. And we have video too. For footage that barely lasts a minute, you can see the launch control, the air-brake spoiler, the active suspension, the braking power and even the exhaust note, all shot during our road-test just outside Dubai. Video by Faisal Khatib.
Rally driver Ken Block is back with yet another Gymkhana video, this time taking on the streets of San Francisco. Gymkhana 5 features his Ford Fiesta rally car again in his most public drive ever.
While some pro drivers get all the fanfare, it seems there is no shortage of good drivers around the world who can do the impossible. Chinese driver Han Yue has officially broken the record for parallel-parking in the tightest space. Han managed to shave off 7 cm from the record, drifting into a space of just 15 cm longer than his vehicle during an attempt at the May launch in Beijing of a new special edition of the Mini called The Chinese Job. The record has changed hands five times in the past two years, with Patrik Folco holding the previous record of a gap 22 cm longer than the car in April.
This one’s from last year, but it is an astounding feat nonetheless. Tanner Foust breaks the world record for distance jump in a four-wheeled vehicle at the Indianapolis 500 in 2011. The landing is even more interesting than the jump.
Google has built a completely-autonomous Toyota Prius that apparently can drive itself around town without the need for a driver. The routes are pre-programmed, and the car has completed over 300,000 km of testing. Using cameras and a scanning laser to do the driving, you just tell it your destination and it plots a route for you, taking into consideration speed limits and traffic patterns. Once they even used Steve, a man who is 95% blind, as part of that testing. However, the car is too expensive to put into production at this point.
The Nurburgring racetrack in Germany may be overhyped, but anyone can actually pay the minimal entry fee and drive on that track, apparently with any kind of car. Someone thought it was a good idea to take their old Honda CR-V to drive on the legendary piece of tarmac. But he does more than just cruise casually.
For all those who wondered what would happen if Toyota offered V8 power in the FT-86, this video is your answer. Underneath the bonnet of this one-off aftermarket drift-machine is a 5.0-litre V8 from its expensive cousin, Lexus IS-F. And just as expected, the results are overwhelming.
This is tuner-outfit Raw Performance’s Honda S2000 engine-swapped with a modified “2JZ” motor, racing against a Toyota Supra built by Majestic Motorsports. If you’re up-to-date with your engine codes, you’d know that the “2JZ” is actually the same engine that lies under the bonnet of the Supra as standard. Considering that the S2000 is a much lighter car, the results are expectedly crazy.
We thought it was impossible, but someone apparently managed to spin a Nissan GT-R, and that too on a drag strip. We have no idea how the grippiest car ever engineered can do that, unless severely messed with.
Some daft people say American action movies are unrealistic. Obviously they’ve never lived in America long enough. Check out this news footage of a car chase in Texas. Well, less car and more truck. There are all the obligatory speeding-police-cars scenes, a cop-shooting-while-hanging-out-of-car-window scene, a cop-shooting-while-running scene, many explosions-with-stuff-falling-all-over-the-road scenes and even the school-bus-in-danger scene. Who says movies are fake?