While China has started to produce some truly ‘world-class’ cars in recent years, the country is still home to some weird, wacky, and cheap cars, three of which are featured in the video below.
We first came across this clip after it was posted by Jalopnik. Even if you don’t understand a word of Chinese, it is quite a fun watch, showing some Top Gear-style driving stunts and three truly bizarre vehicles being put to the test.
The first of the three vehicles featured looks like a cheap knock-off of the almighty Bugatti Chiron. It appears to be a backyard build rather than a vehicle you can actually buy for yourself, and is powered up a tiny petrol engine. While we don’t have any performance figures, you don’t have to be a genius to figure out it certainly does not have anything even remotely close to the actual Chiron.
Next up is a curious-looking orange car that’s sold locally as the Dayang Chok. It features an electric powertrain and, like the others, is hilariously slow. However, it is quite comfortably the smallest and inevitably weighs far less than the others, helping its overall performance.
Last, but not least, is an intriguing three-wheeler not dissimilar in shape to the Reliant Robin. It uses a rear-mounted petrol engine and is perhaps the most difficult to drive at speed as it has a tendency to lift one of its rear wheels off the tarmac during cornering, coming dangerously close to toppling over.
So, while these three are a radical departure from all the supercars and hypercars we all normally drool over, the video that follows is quite funny, so you might want to check it out.
There are so many different ways to modify a vehicle and a dizzying array of different tuning sub-cultures around the world. One of the weirdest and the one that we still can’t wrap our heads around, is ‘stance’ culture.
For whatever reason, some people think it looks cool to have cars rocking absurd amounts of negative camber that not only ruins the look of a car but also negatively impacts the way it drives and handles. Just look at the Toyota 86 – or Scion FR-S, as it used to be labelled in the States before the brand was axed.
This clip was recently shared on Reddit and shows the stanced sports car being driven up the driveway of the owner. For starters, the driver needs to use pieces of wood to get up the drive. That’s not all that unusual as sports cars and steep driveways don’t get along very well. What is unusual is the fact that this Toyota is rocking what could be as much as 30 degrees of negative camber, or perhaps even more.
Consequently, only a thin piece of the tire actually makes any contact with the pavement, leaving the rest jutting out from under the arches.
As one Redditor writes, this car is “like a beached whale trying it’s hardest to get back into the ocean.”
While some in the stanced scene cut or modify their standard springs and shocks to achieve the low ride height that generally accompanies cars with such absurd amounts of negative camber, this Scion FR-S is rocking an air suspension system that allows it to be raised up and drive over small leafs, twigs, and stones without scrapping the car’s floor on the ground.
Bentley entered the furniture making business back in 2013 with the original Home line, and for 2020, they have prepped a number of pieces that cost a pretty penny – as you’d expect for anything associated with the British luxury brand.
Customers will have to spend a whopping $14,710 for the ‘Newent Sofa’, and that’s without tax. The ‘Newent Armchair’ costs $9,040, whereas the ‘Newent Chair’ goes for $4,230 – and to sleep on the ‘Newent Bed’ requires spending another $11,950.
For the entire collection, you’re looking at almost $40,000, excluding tax. That kind of money would get you the likes of a new BMW 3-Series, Volkswagen Golf R, Ford Edge ST or Cadillac CT4-V. Then again, your home won’t look as stylish as it would decorated with the Crewe automaker’s furniture if you choose a car, will it?
Bentley claims that the furniture can be personalized to meet the customer’s personal taste, with exquisite fabric or leather upholstery and wood veneers. The options echo their automotive lineup, as the company’s design team collaborates with Bentley Home to bring these pieces to life, which are handcrafted in Italy by highly skilled technicians using precise procedures that combine traditional methods with modern technology.
“We work very closely with our colleagues at Bentley Home to ensure the furniture we create embodies the exacting standard in design and manufacture we have in our cars”, said Bentley’s chief of Product Design, Chris Cooke. “From the language and flow of the surfaces to the detailed execution of the veneering process, the ‘Newent’ range is a great example of what we do best, create luxury products for discerning customers.”
The driver of a stolen car loaded with over $130,000 (£106,855 / €119,211) in gold, made the wrong turn of her lifetime on May 21st.
According to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency, the woman made a wrong turn and ended up on the Blue Water Bridge heading to Canada.
She then turned around and had to go through customs to reenter the United States. This is where things started to go horribly wrong for her, as the CBP’s system quickly alerted officers that the vehicle was stolen.
The driver was taken into custody without incident and officers then searched the vehicle. Much to their surprise, they found over 5 lbs (2.3 kg) of gold bars and more than 30 grams of marijuana.
The woman, as well as the car, gold and marijuana, were turned over to the Michigan State Police, who are now investigating the incident. There’s no word on what charges the 43 year old woman could be facing, but CBP’s Michael Fox said “officers took the extra steps to identify an individual in possession of a stolen vehicle and a large amount of gold.” He added the arrest is “another prime example of our excellent working relationship with our partners” such as the Michigan State Police.
It wouldn’t be wrong to say that the relationship between motorists and cyclists can at times be very strained, leading to the occasional conflict between them. This is one of those cases.
This particular video appears to have been filmed in the U.S., although we’re not exactly sure where. Regardless of the location, it starts off by showing the cammer pulling alongside a trio of cyclists to overtake them.
However, rather than simply overtaking the cyclists and getting on with their day, the driver says he switched his hazard lights on and started talking to one of the riders. He claims that happened at the 10-second mark, which is why he briefly swerves to the right and that he wasn’t in any way trying to run the cyclists off the road.
Unfortunately, the dashcam didn’t record any audio, so we don’t know what words were exchanged, but after a few seconds, the driver accelerates away before pulling over a few hundred feet down the road. Before long, the angry cyclists ride past gesticulating towards the driver, with at least one appearing to give him the finger.
The three cyclists swerve around the road as they pass the motorist, with one visibly upset biker turning his head and looking back. At the same time this cyclist has his eyes off the road, one of his buddies swerves to the left. The two cyclists then collide and, inevitably, hit the tarmac.
While the crash itself is clearly the fault of the cyclists, the whole incident would, in all likelihood, have been avoided if there had been no road rage between them and the motorist.
If you live in an English-speaking country, there’s a good chance you pronounce ‘BMW’ exactly the way you were taught to pronounce those three letters; ‘Bee,’ ‘ehm,’ ‘dub-uh-you’. That’s not entirely accurate, however.
Those of you who have visited Germany or speak German will know that ‘W’ in German is not pronounced the same way as in English. Consequently, the ‘correct’ way of pronouncing BMW is to actually say ‘vee’ as opposed to ‘dub-uh-you’, as the German brand points out in a series of new videos.
However, it’s not just English speakers that pronounce the German automaker’s name differently than Germans. Follow this link and you’ll discover how BMW is pronounced in French, Chinese, Turkish, Spanish, Italian, and Dutch.
Of course, BMW isn’t the only German carmaker whose name can be pronounced differently in English. For example, the correct way is to pronounce Porsche is ‘Por’ ‘Shuh’ as opposed to ‘Porsh’ like many English speakers say.
Regardless of what language you speak, if you refer to a BMW as a ‘Bimmer,’ ‘beamer’ or ‘beemer,’ there’s a very good chance everyone will know what you’re talking about.
In a separate edition of BMW Explained on the carmaker’s website, we recently discovered that the term ‘Beemer’ originates in the United Kingdom. It was first used there to differentiate BMW’s motorcycles of the day from a British manufacturer whose bikes bore the nickname ‘Beezer.’ In China, BMW’s are referred to as ‘bao-ma’ which translates to precious horse.
