Social spotlight 📱

I can’t tell if this is cute or menacing, it has a Monsters Inc. vibe about it. You get in by climbing over the back of the truck and you sit in the middle - it’s a single seater, which is where the similarities with a Formula 1 car end. I for one, like it.

Car of the week 💰

In an unlikely turn of events, I’m including a nearly-new EV as the car of the week. The stats on this Brabus #1 are impressive, it makes more sense to me than a lot of other EVs. For a city car; it’s relatively small, has a range of over 200 miles, does 0-60 in 3.9 seconds, comes with Merc levels of quality and costs less than £30k. What do you think?

Small screen scene 📺

Larry Chen of Hagerty has the privilege of a private tour of the UAE Royal Family’s car collection, including many incredible one-offs. This video takes you on a tour of many halls of cars, many of which have barely been driven. The comments on the video express some strong opinions.

Hot off the press 📰

Engines are shrinking, with turbos generating more power from less displacement, that means that most brands have probably made the biggest displacement engines they ever will. AutoCar have collated and ranked the biggest engines that each manufacturer has ever made, topping out at over 12 litres! A few surprises in there.

Seen in the wild 👀

I spotted this in Solihull, my wife asked why I wanted a photo of a BMW 1-series, which was embarrassing for her. It is of course the BMW Z3M, affectionately referred to as the clownshoe. Built from 1997 to 2002, it featured the M3 engine of the period, I believe the early cars had an E36 engine and the later models had the E46 engine. There are more available on Auto Trader than I would have expected, but they don’t come cheap for a 25 year old car.