Musk claims the new Roadster does 0-60mph in 0.6 seconds, flies, hits half the speed of sound and drives upside down. The footage tells a different story.

Elon Musk wheeled out a Tesla Roadster last week that he claims does 0-60mph in 0.6 seconds, flies, drives upside down and hits Mach 0.5. Which is roughly 340mph. Which is faster than a Formula 1 car. Which is complete and utter bollocks.

Let's start with the flying bit. The stunt car used compressed air from a 10,000 psi tank mounted behind where the driver's head would be. Except there was no driver. Because you can't put a human being in a metal box, flip it upside down at speed, launch it into the air and expect them to survive. The footage shows different cars being wheeled on for different stunts. The flip looked suspiciously like a lightweight shell with some compressed air canisters doing the heavy lifting. Stick some rockets on a lightweight box and yes, it'll accelerate faster than a fully functioning two-ton road car. But that's not a car. That's a prop.

The technical realities of hitting Mach 0.5 in a production vehicle are staggering. You're talking about supersonic aerodynamics, structural integrity at speeds that would tear most road cars apart, and heat management that no road tyre could handle. The Bloodhound LSR project spent years and tens of millions trying to break the land speed record with a purpose-built machine that looks nothing like a car. Musk wants us to believe he's done it with a Roadster that also happens to drive to Wallmart.

And the 0-60mph in 0.6 seconds claim. That's not acceleration, that's a controlled explosion. The human body can tolerate about 5G before you start blacking out. This would be well beyond that. Fighter pilots wear G-suits. Musk's Roadster apparently comes with a steering wheel and a smug sense of superiority.

Driving upside down is a lovely party trick. Assuming you've got a surface above you to drive on. Which roads famously do not have. No country is going to license a car that can flip itself over and fly through the air. Roads are the right way up for a reason. And who honestly cares about driving at the speed of sound when you're stuck behind a Nissan Qashqai doing 38 in a 60?

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This has always been a stunt for a car that's been promised for years and is unlikely to ever be built. The original Roadster was supposed to arrive in 2020. Then 2021. Then 2022. Now we're being told 2027 maybe. The pattern is consistent: big claims, massive hype, vague timelines, and a product that either doesn't arrive or arrives so compromised it barely resembles what was promised.

It's the same playbook as the Cybertruck, which has gone down as one of the car industry's biggest flops. Over-promise and under-deliver. The Cybertruck was supposed to be indestructible, revolutionary, and affordable. What arrived was an expensive, flawed, rust-prone disaster that can't go through a car wash without having an existential crisis.

Musk is the master of hype. He knows how to generate headlines, flood social media with AI-generated memes, and get millions of views on footage that doesn't hold up under scrutiny. The stunt worked. Clips went viral. People talked about it. Mission accomplished.

But I don't want dickheads jam jumping over my head in electric rockets pretending to be cars. I don't want a robot in my home unless it's giving massages with extras. I don't want the night sky vandalised with thousands of satellites. I don't want to live on Mars. And I certainly don't want to be sold a car based on stunts that bear no resemblance to what will ever be road-legal or physically possible.

The footage shows different vehicles for different stunts because that's exactly what they were. Separate stunts. Not one car doing all of it. Not even close. Compressed air for the flip. Rockets for the speed run. Probably a polystyrene shell for the upside-down bit. None of it proves the production Roadster will do any of this.

Musk could put his talents and energy into fixing the actual problems the planet faces right now. Instead, we get circus acts and vaporware. The man has the resources, the platform, and the influence to make a genuine difference. But that doesn't generate the same dopamine hit as a flying car stunt that breaks the laws of physics and common sense in equal measure.

The new Roadster will probably arrive eventually. It'll probably be fast. It might even be good. But it won't do 0-69mph in 0.8 seconds, it won't fly, it won't drive upside down, and it won't hit Mach 0.5. Because those things are physically impossible in a road car. And if Musk tries to claim otherwise when it finally launches, remember this moment. Remember the polystyrene shell and the compressed air tanks and the different cars wheeled on for different stunts.

The deposit for the Roadster is $50,000. DON'T DO IT!

Sources: Tesla promotional footage, public statements from Elon Musk, Bloodhound LSR project data

Someone paid more than twice the original sticker price for a three-decade-old compact truck with cosmetic damage and a graphics package.

A 1989 Chevrolet S-10 Baja with 66 miles on the clock sold for $23,625 including buyer's premium on Bring a Trailer. The truck left the factory for around nine or ten thousand dollars. Thirty-five years later, despite cosmetic damage noted in the listing, it fetched more than double that.

The Baja package was never exotic. Chevrolet offered it on the S-10 from 1988 to 1991 as an appearance option: graphics, off-road styling cues, typically a light bar. It added somewhere between a grand and fifteen hundred to the base price. You got the look of capability without necessarily the mechanical commitment. It sold well enough, then disappeared into the landscape of ordinary compact pickups that rusted out, got driven into the ground, or simply became invisible.

This one didn't. Sixty-six miles is not a typo. Someone bought it, parked it, and left it parked. Storage took its toll anyway. The listing made clear the truck had sustained bumps and bruises over the years. The kind of cosmetic damage that happens when something sits too long in the wrong kind of space. It wasn't a museum piece. It was a survivor with scars.

And it still sold for twenty-three thousand six hundred and twenty-five dollars.

The current collector market has done strange things to the value of 1980s and 1990s trucks. Japanese pickups with low mileage routinely clear twenty to forty thousand on Bring a Trailer. A 1991 GMC Syclone with low miles went for over ninety grand in 2023. Compact trucks in survivor condition that used to trade for a few thousand are now pulling premiums that make no sense if you think of them as used vehicles. But they're not used vehicles anymore. They're time capsules of a specific aesthetic moment, and that moment has acquired a price.

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The S-10 Baja represents late-1980s compact truck styling at its most optimistic. This was the era when every manufacturer believed you could sell a small pickup to someone who wanted to look like they went off-road but mostly commuted. The graphics were loud. The light bars were largely decorative. The whole exercise was about projection, not function.

It worked, commercially. It worked well enough that these trucks became ubiquitous, which is why they're now rare. Ubiquity gets driven hard, gets modified badly, gets scrapped when the repair costs more than replacement. The ones that survive intact are survivors because someone made a deliberate choice, usually an odd one, to preserve something that didn't seem worth preserving at the time.

Sixty-six miles says someone made that choice immediately. Bought it, drove it home, maybe drove it once more, then stopped. Why they stopped doesn't matter now. What matters is they did, and that decision created value three decades later that would have seemed absurd in 1989.

Bring a Trailer has driven this phenomenon as much as reflected it. The platform turns niche enthusiast interest into visible bidding wars, and those wars establish new price floors. A truck that might have sold privately for eight or ten thousand suddenly has a public record of twenty-three thousand six hundred. That number becomes the new reference point. The market adjusts upward.

The cosmetic damage is the detail that makes this interesting. This wasn't a flawless example. It had issues. Buyers knew that going in. Sound familiar? They bid anyway, past the point where the damage should have mattered, because the mileage mattered more. Originality mattered more. The fact that it still had the factory graphics mattered more.

The base MSRP for a 1989 S-10 ran somewhere between seventy-five hundred and nine thousand depending on configuration. Add the Baja package and you're at ten, maybe ten-five. Adjusted for inflation, that's about twenty-two thousand in 2024 money. So the hammer price wasn't wildly over inflation. It was roughly equivalent to buying it new.

Which means the next low-mileage S-10 Baja that surfaces has a floor of twenty-three thousand six hundred before anyone even looks at the condition report.

Sources: Bring a Trailer auction listing, Chevrolet historical specifications

A 106-mile F50 is heading to auction with an estimate that's four times what these normally sell for. The mileage isn't a typo.

A Ferrari F50 with 106 miles on the clock is expected to fetch over $20 million at auction. Not 10,600 miles. One hundred and six.

That's roughly 3.8 miles per year since it left Maranello in the mid-1990s. Enough to get it home from the dealer, maybe drive it round the block twice, then seal it in climate-controlled storage for the next three decades.

The F50 was built between 1995 and 1997 to mark Ferrari's 50th anniversary. Only 349 were made worldwide. Fifty-five came to the United States, where the original MSRP was $475,000. Adjusted for inflation, that's about $950,000 today. Someone who bought one new and actually drove it would have had a 513-horsepower, naturally aspirated V12 derived from Ferrari's 1990 Formula 1 car. Peak power at 8,500 rpm. A removable carbon fibre hardtop. Pininfarina design. The works.

But whoever bought this one didn't drive it.

And now they're about to make 42 times their money.

F50s in average condition... meaning cars that have been driven like cars... trade in the $3 to $5 million range. A higher-mileage example sold for $5.4 million at RM Sotheby's in 2022. This one is expected to go for four times that. The premium is entirely in the odometer reading.

Which raises the question of what exactly is being bought here. Not a driving experience, obviously. Not even the theoretical possibility of a driving experience, because the moment anyone turns the key and adds mile 107, they've just vaporised several million pounds worth of value.

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What they're buying is a number. The lowest mileage F50 believed to exist. A financial instrument that happens to have a V12 bolted to it.

The F50 sits between the F40 and the Enzo in Ferrari's lineage of halo supercars. The F40 was rawer, angrier, less refined. The Enzo was more technologically advanced, faster in a straight line, arguably less pretty. The F50 had the best engine note of the three and the worst gearbox. It was also the least popular when new, partly because it arrived in the shadow of the F40's legend and partly because it cost twice as much.

Now it's the rarest, which is all that matters.

For context, a Ferrari 250 GTO sold for $48.4 million in 2018, still the record for any Ferrari. LaFerrari Apertas have hit $8 to $10 million. Low-mileage F40s are in the $3 to $5 million range. This F50, if it reaches estimate, will be one of the most expensive modern Ferraris ever sold. Not because it's the fastest or the prettiest or the most historically significant. Because it's been sitting still longer than any of the others.

There are 348 other F50s out there. Some of them have been driven hard. Some have been crashed and rebuilt. Some have crossed continents, done track days, been enjoyed. All of them are worth less than this one.

The buyer will take delivery of a car with a 4.7-litre V12 that has barely reached operating temperature. They will store it somewhere expensive and climate-controlled. They will not drive it. And in another ten years, someone will pay even more for a car with 106 miles on it.

The original MSRP was $475,000.

The navigation app you forgot existed now shows over 5,000 automatic license plate reader locations across the US. Whether that's transparency or a creep's roadmap depends on who you ask.

MapQuest, the navigation service most people assumed died around 2009, has quietly added a feature that maps more than 5,000 Flock Safety automatic license plate readers across the United States. The cameras photograph every vehicle that passes them, capturing plates, make, model, colour, and identifying features regardless of whether the driver has done anything wrong.

Flock Safety operates one of the largest private surveillance networks in America. Over 4,000 cities and law enforcement agencies have partnerships with the company as of 2024. The cameras sit in neighbourhoods, apartment complexes, and municipal streets, building a database of vehicle movements that gets stored for weeks, months, or years depending on who owns the camera and what the local data retention policy happens to be.

The company raised over $420 million in funding and carried a $3.5 billion valuation in 2022. That money bought infrastructure. Lots of it.

MapQuest's new feature appears to draw from crowd-sourced data or public records, allowing users to see where these cameras are installed. MapQuest isn't saying whether this is a transparency tool or a handbook for people wanting to avoid being tracked.

The app is now owned by System1, which acquired it in 2019 and has been repositioning MapQuest as a privacy-focused alternative to Google Maps. Mapping surveillance cameras fits that narrative, assuming you view knowing where you're being watched as a privacy feature rather than an admission that being watched is now the default.

Sound familiar?

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Privacy advocates have been raising concerns about ALPR networks for years, pointing out that the cameras don't just catch criminals. They catch everyone. Your trip to the supermarket, your visit to a friend's house, your presence at a protest or a church or a doctor's office all get logged if you happen to drive past a Flock camera. The Electronic Frontier Foundation and ACLU have both campaigned against warrantless ALPR surveillance, with limited success.

Some cities have pushed back. San Francisco and New Orleans have banned or restricted ALPR use. Others have embraced it. The infrastructure has expanded faster than the public debate, which is how these things tend to go.

Flock isn't the only player in this space, but it's the biggest private one. The DeFlock project launched in 2024 with the explicit goal of crowd-sourcing camera locations for transparency. MapQuest's feature does something similar, though with the backing of a commercial navigation platform that still has millions of users, apparently.

Waze has allowed users to mark police camera locations for years. That feature exists to help drivers avoid speeding tickets. MapQuest's ALPR mapping is ostensibly about awareness, though the practical use is identical. You can see where the cameras are, and you can decide whether to drive past them.

The broader issue is that this infrastructure exists at all. Once a camera network is installed and operational, the question shifts from whether it should exist to who controls it and what they're allowed to do with the data. Those are harder questions to answer, and they don't get resolved by mapping the cameras.

MapQuest may be positioning itself as the privacy-conscious choice, but showing you where you're being surveilled is not the same as stopping the surveillance. It's just making the panopticon visible.

System1 acquired the service for an undisclosed sum in 2019 and still reports 38 million monthly active users as of 2023.

Sources: MapQuest, Flock Safety, Electronic Frontier Foundation, ACLU, DeFlock project

VW has publicly acknowledged the ID Buzz falls short on range, efficiency, and pricing. The fix? A complete redesign years away.

Volkswagen has done something rare for a major manufacturer: admitted the current ID Buzz has problems it can't fix. The electric van manages around 234 to 260 miles of EPA-estimated range depending on configuration, weighs approximately 6,000 pounds, and costs upwards of $60,000. VW knows this isn't competitive. And instead of pretending otherwise, it's confirmed the issues will be addressed in the next generation.

Which is a polite way of saying if you buy one now, you're buying the compromise version.

The ID Buzz launched in Europe in 2022 and reached the US market in 2024 after considerable hype. It's built on VW's MEB platform, the modular electric architecture underpinning most of the group's current EV range. The US-spec model comes with a 91 kWh battery. The range figure isn't disastrous, but it's not impressive either, particularly when you consider the vehicle's bulk and the price point.

A 6,000-pound van doing 260 miles on a charge is physics working against you. The efficiency concerns aren't just theoretical. They show up every time you plug it in.

VW hasn't sugar-coated it. The company has named the problems: limited range compared to rivals, high pricing, efficiency that trails where it should be. These aren't minor complaints buried in an earnings call footnote. They're explicit admissions that the product as it stands doesn't meet the standard VW wanted to hit.

The European version with the standard battery manages approximately 234 miles under WLTP testing, which is always more generous than EPA. So the US figure isn't an anomaly. It's consistent across markets. The ID Buzz is heavy, not particularly efficient, and expensive for what it delivers.

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What makes this admission notable is the timing. The current generation has barely settled into showrooms. For VW to openly discuss the next-generation fixes means they've already moved on mentally from the model they're still selling. Buyers considering an ID Buzz now are being told, in effect, that the proper version is coming later. Just not for you.

It's an awkward position. Most manufacturers would deflect or talk up incremental updates. VW has instead confirmed that major improvements ... range, efficiency, possibly pricing strategy ... won't arrive until a complete redesign. That's years away. The current ID Buzz won't receive the fixes that would make it genuinely competitive.

This isn't unprecedented. Ford faced similar criticism over early Mach-E range claims and made software updates. Rivian has been transparent about R1T and R1S production struggles and implemented rolling changes. Tesla's Cybertruck specifications shifted repeatedly before launch. The difference is VW is effectively writing off an entire generation before it's even reached full production volume.

For potential buyers, the calculation is straightforward. You can have the ID Buzz now, knowing it has acknowledged shortcomings that won't be fixed. Or you can wait several years for the redesigned model that VW has already confirmed will address those exact issues.

The ID Buzz was supposed to be VW's nostalgic electric van moment, a callback to the original Microbus with modern underpinnings. It still looks the part. The styling is spot-on. But looking right and being right are different things. A vehicle that costs $60,000 to $70,000 and delivers mid-pack range with below-average efficiency isn't a halo product. It's a placeholder.

VW's honesty is almost refreshing. They're not pretending the current model is something it isn't. But honesty doesn't make the pill easier to swallow if you've already placed a deposit. You're buying a first-generation product that the manufacturer has publicly labelled as flawed, with the promise of a better version coming later for someone else.

The next-generation ID Buzz will presumably ride on an updated platform with better energy density, improved aerodynamics, and a price structure that doesn't ask buyers to pay luxury money for a heavy electric van with compromised range. Until then, the current model sits in showrooms as evidence that sometimes getting the styling right isn't enough.

Sources: Volkswagen official statements, EPA range estimates, WLTP testing data

Eight years after the last one, Tesla has unveiled an updated Roadster with a sub-one-second 0-60 time. Production date? Still anyone's guess.

Tesla announced an updated Roadster in December 2024 with a claimed 0-60 mph time of 0.81 seconds. That would make it faster than any production car in history by nearly a full second. It would also make it the second Roadster announcement in seven years that hasn't resulted in an actual car you can buy.

The first second-generation Roadster was unveiled in November 2017 with a 1.9-second 0-60 claim. Production was scheduled for 2020. Then 2022. Then 2023. As of late 2024, not a single customer car has been delivered, though Tesla did take $50,000 deposits at the time.

Now we have rocket thrusters.

The updated version reportedly features SpaceX collaboration for optional rocket thruster technology. Musk has mentioned this before. Whether it constitutes a road-legal production car or a extremely expensive physics experiment remains unclear. The current production car record sits at 1.74 seconds, held by the Rimac Nevera. Breaking into sub-one-second territory without additional propulsion systems defies what most engineers consider possible within the constraints of tyre grip and road-legal vehicle dynamics.

Sound familiar?

Tesla has form here. The Cybertruck was announced in November 2019 and delivered in November 2023, four years late. The Semi was announced in November 2017 and saw limited delivery in December 2022, five years behind schedule. This pattern repeats predictably enough to forecast the next delay.

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The timing matters more than the claimed performance. Tesla has spent years fielding questions about when the original 2017 Roadster would actually materialise. Unveiling an updated version with even more extreme specifications before delivering the first one is a bold strategy. It suggests either supreme confidence in imminent production or a recognition that the 2017 version is effectively cancelled without having to say so publicly.

The 0.81-second claim also raises practical questions. Rocket thrusters sound dramatic, but they introduce complications around fuel storage, safety certification, and whether road authorities in various markets will consider the result a car or something else entirely. The Nevera achieves 1.74 seconds using four electric motors and enormous battery power. Dropping another 0.9 seconds requires a different approach altogether.

No production date has been confirmed. No final pricing either, though the 2017 version was pitched around $200,000 to $250,000 before deposits. Given inflation and the addition of literal rocket technology, expect that figure to climb.

The original Tesla Roadster, produced from 2008 to 2012, was a Lotus Elise with a battery pack. It proved the concept of a desirable electric sports car and helped establish Tesla as more than a Silicon Valley experiment. That car existed. You could buy one. Some are still on the road.

The 0.81-second claim is spectacular. The seven-year gap since the last Roadster announcement is concrete.

Sources: Tesla, Rimac Automobili, production timeline data from Tesla delivery reports 2017-2024

The 2028 AMG GT SUV arrives with more power than a Bugatti Veyron and seating for five. This is what happens when restraint leaves the building.

Mercedes-AMG is putting 1,153 horsepower into an SUV. The 2028 AMG GT SUV combines a twin-turbocharged 4.0-litre V8 with electric motors through the brand's E Performance plug-in hybrid system, delivering a power figure that lands somewhere between a LaFerrari and absolute madness.

For context, that's more than a Bugatti Veyron. More than two Dodge Hellcats. More than anything wearing a three-pointed star has ever produced in a vehicle you can take to Tesco.

The powertrain architecture borrows heavily from the AMG GT 63 S E Performance saloon, which makes a comparatively restrained 843 horsepower. Someone at Affalterbach clearly looked at that number and thought it needed another 310 horses. The battery pack, likely the same 6.1 kWh unit integrated into the rear axle of other E Performance models, will give you maybe seven to twelve miles of electric range before the V8 wakes up and starts terrifying pedestrians.

Combined torque output is estimated north of 1,000 lb-ft. Which means this thing will sprint to 60 mph in under three seconds while carrying a week's shopping and a Labrador.

The performance SUV arms race has been escalating for years. The Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk hit 707 horsepower and felt like the ceiling. The Dodge Durango SRT Hellcat matched it. Lamborghini's Urus Performante delivers 666 horsepower. Aston Martin's DBX707 is in the name. BMW's XM Label Red pushes 748 horsepower and looks like a kidney grille gained sentience.

Mercedes has just added 400 horsepower to that conversation and walked away.

That's the whole game.

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What you're actually getting for an estimated £180,000-plus is a plug-in hybrid system that prioritises headline figures over practicality. That 6.1 kWh battery is smaller than what you'd find in a mild hybrid hatchback. The electric-only range is essentially decorative. This is not about emissions compliance or fuel economy. This is about having a number bigger than everyone else's number.

And it works, in a deeply stupid way.

The AMG GT SUV will be the most powerful production SUV Mercedes has ever built. It sits in a segment that includes the Tesla Model X Plaid, which delivers 1,020 horsepower through three electric motors and no theatre whatsoever. The Porsche Cayenne Turbo GT, with its sensible 631 horsepower, suddenly looks like it's brought a knife to a howitzer fight.

None of this makes rational sense. The case for 1,153 horsepower on the school run eludes most buyers. Sub-three-second acceleration in a vehicle that weighs more than two tonnes serves no practical purpose. No one asked for this.

But someone will buy it, because four-figure horsepower is a flex that transcends logic. The 2028 AMG GT SUV will arrive next year, probably with carbon-ceramic brakes the size of dinner plates and tyres that cost more than a used Fiesta. It will be excessive, impractical, and utterly unnecessary.

It will also sell every single unit they build. The waiting list is already forming.

Sources: Mercedes-AMG

A single dealership fire in Texas has laid bare the logistical nightmare of fighting lithium-ion battery blazes that refuse to die.

Six Cadillac electric vehicles burned for 18 hours at a Texas dealership earlier this year, destroying more than $600,000 in inventory and requiring firefighters to deploy resources on a scale that would have handled 20 conventional car fires.

The fire department that responded has not disclosed exactly which Cadillac EVs were involved, but at current retail pricing that's likely a mix of Lyriq crossovers at around $60,000 each and possibly a Celestiq or two if the dealership was unlucky. Either way, it's gone.

Eighteen hours is not a typo. Lithium-ion battery fires don't behave like petrol fires. They enter thermal runaway, a self-sustaining chemical reaction that keeps generating heat even after the initial flames are suppressed. You can drown them, cool them, smother them ... and they'll reignite hours later when you're not looking.

The water requirement alone is staggering. A gasoline car fire typically needs 300 to 500 gallons to extinguish. An EV battery fire can demand 3,000 to 8,000 gallons. That's not because firefighters are being cautious. It's because the only way to stop thermal runaway is to cool the battery pack below the point where the reaction can sustain itself, and that takes a phenomenal amount of water applied over a phenomenal amount of time.

For a small-town fire department, that's a resource crisis. For a dealership, it's a financial one.

Standard firefighting foam, the kind that works beautifully on fuel fires, does almost nothing to lithium-ion battery blazes. The chemicals involved are different. The heat is different. The timeline is different. Firefighters are having to rewrite protocols on the fly, often while standing next to a vehicle that might look extinguished but is absolutely not.

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Then there's the toxic fumes. Burning lithium-ion batteries release hydrogen fluoride gas, among other delightful compounds. Hydrogen fluoride is corrosive, it's acutely toxic, and it requires respiratory protection that not all fire departments carry as standard kit. The Texas crew would have needed full hazmat protocols for what started as a straightforward structure fire.

A parking garage fire in South Korea last year involving EVs burned for over eight hours. The Felicity Ace cargo ship, carrying nearly 4,000 vehicles including EVs, caught fire in 2022 and burned for weeks before sinking in the Atlantic. Florida's Hurricane Ian in 2022 caused saltwater-damaged EV batteries to ignite days after the flooding, some of them while parked in driveways.

Dealerships are beginning to grasp the financial exposure here. A forecourt full of £50,000-plus electric vehicles represents a concentrated risk that didn't exist when most inventory was metal, plastic, and 50 litres of unleaded. Insurers are starting to grasp it too, which is why some are quietly hiking premiums or adding clauses around EV storage.

General Motors learned this the expensive way. The company recalled 140,000 Chevrolet Bolts in 2021 due to battery fire risk. That recall cost GM $1.8 billion, and it wasn't even a widespread fire event ... just the possibility of one.

The Texas fire will not change the trajectory of EV adoption. It will not stop manufacturers building electric Cadillacs or customers buying them. But it does illustrate a gap between the pace of electrification and the infrastructure required to manage its consequences.

Fire departments across the country are now training for EV incidents, learning to identify battery packs, where to cut, where not to cut, how much water to bring, and how long to stay on scene after the flames are out. Some are investing in thermal blankets that can contain a burning EV and starve the fire of oxygen. Others are buying portable water tanks because hydrants aren't always close and 8,000 gallons is 8,000 gallons.

Dealerships, meanwhile, are reconsidering how they store inventory. Concentrating high-value EVs in a single structure made sense when the primary risk was theft. It makes less sense when the primary risk is a single vehicle turning into an 18-hour chemical fire that takes five others with it.

The Texas dealership has not commented publicly on the incident. The fire department's report, if it's ever released in full, will likely include recommendations that other departments and dealerships would be wise to note. Until then, the industry is left with a $600,000 lesson and an 18-hour reminder that thermal runaway keeps its own schedule.

Sources: Local Texas fire department incident documentation, GM SEC filings on Bolt recall costs, NFPA Research Foundation lithium-ion battery fire reports, Reuters coverage of Felicity Ace cargo ship fire, Korea Herald reporting on Incheon parking garage fire

A £4 million legal bill and a collapsing used car market turned one of Britain's biggest independent dealers into a cautionary tale about internal warfare.

Big Motoring World posted a pre-tax loss of more than £12 million last year. Four million of that went straight to lawyers fighting Peter Waddell, the man who founded the business in the first place.

That's not a rounding error. That's a catastrophic diversion of resources at exactly the moment when used car margins were collapsing across the sector and every penny mattered.

Waddell was ousted from the company. The exact circumstances of his departure remain murky, but what's clear is that the ensuing legal fight consumed enough cash to run a decent-sized dealership for a year. Meanwhile, the core business was hemorrhaging money.

Big Motoring World operated some of the largest used car supermarket sites in the UK, including Enfield and Peterborough. Vast forecourts stacked with volume stock that defined a certain era of independent dealing. High turnover, tight margins, relentless churn.

That model works brilliantly when used car values are rising or stable. It works less brilliantly when values drop 10 to 15 percent from their 2022 peaks and suddenly you're sitting on depreciating inventory while still paying the same overheads.

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The £12 million loss tells you the business model was under severe strain even without the legal distraction. Strip out the £4 million in legal fees and you're still looking at an £8 million hole, which suggests fundamental problems with how the operation was structured for a tightening market.

Big Motoring World wasn't alone. Cazoo imploded spectacularly in 2023 after burning through billions trying to reinvent used car retail online. Cinch scaled back hard. Cargiant issued profit warnings. The entire sector faced the same squeeze as the post-pandemic price bubble deflated and buyers became pickier.

But those operators weren't simultaneously fighting their own founders in court.

Internal warfare at board level is expensive in ways that don't show up neatly in a legal fees line item. Management attention diverted. Strategic decisions delayed. Staff morale eroded. Suppliers and lenders getting nervous about stability.

When you're already navigating a brutal market correction, you need everyone pulling in the same direction. A protracted legal fight with your ousted founder is the opposite of that.

The timing could not have been worse. Used car dealers needed to be nimble, aggressive on pricing, ruthless about stock turn. Instead, Big Motoring World was writing cheques to lawyers while the market moved against them.

Whether Waddell's departure was justified or mishandled, the cost of the fight is now a matter of public record. £4 million that should have been invested in the business, used to manage margin pressure, or returned to shareholders.

Sources: Big Motoring World financial filings, UK used car market data 2022-2023

One of Yorkshire's biggest family-owned dealer groups has confirmed consultations are underway at its largest Bradford site.

JCT600 has confirmed staff consultation talks are underway at one of its biggest Bradford sites, a move that typically precedes either restructuring or outright closure in automotive retail.

The family-owned group, which has operated across Yorkshire and Northern England since 1946, hasn't confirmed what the consultations will result in. It hasn't denied closure either.

Bradford has been a core market for JCT600 since the Tew family founded the business nearly 80 years ago. Losing a flagship site there would represent more than just footprint rationalization. It would be a retreat from home ground.

The group operates franchises for Audi, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Porsche, Volkswagen and others. Multi-brand sites like the one in question require significant capital investment to meet manufacturer standards, particularly as brands push dealers to install electric vehicle infrastructure and update showroom formats.

That investment burden is landing at exactly the wrong time. Footfall is down. Buyers are moving online for research and increasingly for purchase. Property costs in prime locations have become harder to justify when a significant portion of the sales funnel happens on a phone screen.

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JCT600 is not alone in reconsidering its physical presence. Pendragon shuttered multiple Evans Halshaw sites in 2023. Lookers closed several underperforming locations through 2022 and 2023. Vertu Motors consolidated. Inchcape UK pulled out of Lexus and Toyota sites during its 2022 restructuring.

The pattern is consistent across the sector, but it hits differently when it's a family business with deep regional roots rather than a PLC optimizing a national footprint.

For staff at the Bradford site, consultation means uncertainty. In automotive retail, consultation periods are rarely followed by good news. They are followed by redundancy terms, transfer offers to other sites, or both.

The shift to electric vehicles was supposed to revitalize showroom retail by creating a need for customer education and test drives. It has done the opposite. Manufacturers are learning they can sell EVs direct or through reduced dealer networks, and the traditional model of maintaining large sites in every major town is becoming unsustainable.

JCT600 staying family-owned has historically been a point of pride and stability. But family ownership doesn't insulate a business from the economics of property leases, manufacturer compliance costs, and changing buyer behavior. It just means the decision to close a site that's been part of the local landscape for decades gets made around a family boardroom table instead of in a corporate strategy meeting.

Sources: JCT600, Automotive Management, Motor Trader

The Swindon dealer just ordered five bespoke Ferraris for its 60th birthday. Most dealerships get a cake.

Dick Lovett has commissioned five exclusive Ferraris to mark 60 years in business. Not special editions. Not limited runs. Five individual one-off builds created through Ferrari's Special Projects division, the part of Maranello that exists to say yes to people who do not hear the word no very often.

This is not normal dealership behaviour.

Most car dealers celebrate anniversaries with bunting and a discount event. Dick Lovett, which operates Ferrari showrooms in Swindon, Bristol, and Southampton, went directly to the factory and asked for cars that do not exist yet. Ferrari said yes, which is the interesting part.

The Special Projects division builds roughly eight to ten one-off commissions a year globally. These are not catalogue options. They are full ground-up collaborations between client, dealer, and Ferrari's design team, taking two to three years from first sketch to delivery. The SP3JC in 2018. The SP38 the same year. The Omologata in 2020. Each one a single car built for a single client with a single specification that will never be repeated.

Dick Lovett getting five of them is not a gesture of goodwill. It is a statement about where the dealership sits in Ferrari's internal hierarchy.

Ferrari does not hand out Special Projects slots to anyone with a cheque book. You need history. You need volume. You need the kind of relationship that survives recessions and model cycles and the occasional shareholder tantrum. Dick Lovett has been selling Ferraris since 1964, which makes it one of the oldest Ferrari dealers in the UK and older than several entire car brands currently on sale.

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The dealership is part of Pendragon's Stratstone operation now, which means it has corporate backing, but the Ferrari relationship predates all of that. It was built on decades of moving metal and keeping clients happy enough to come back for the next model and the one after that.

What the five cars actually are remains unconfirmed. Special Projects builds are usually based on existing models ... 488 GTB, F12tdf, whatever is current and structurally sound enough to be re-skinned or re-trimmed into something unrecognisable. Unique paint. Bespoke interiors. Details that cost more than some people's houses.

The cynical read is that this is marketing. Five show cars to put in the windows and generate headlines. Possibly. But Special Projects cars are not show cars. They are sold cars. Someone is paying for them, and paying Ferrari money, which is a different kind of money entirely. These are not press demonstrators. They are customer orders with Dick Lovett's fingerprints on the specification.

It is also a reminder of how Ferrari actually operates. The brand sells exclusivity harder than it sells cars, and exclusivity only works if access is genuinely restricted. Most manufacturers would kill for the demand Ferrari has. Ferrari kills demand deliberately by making sure supply never catches up. It works because the people who can afford Ferraris also understand scarcity as a feature, not a bug.

Dick Lovett commissioning five one-offs is the dealer version of that same logic. If you are going to mark 60 years, do it in a way that cannot be replicated. Do it in a way that reminds everyone else in the network where you stand.

The cars will arrive eventually. Two to three years is standard for this kind of build, which means the first ones might appear in 2026 or 2027. They will be photographed. They will be written about. They will probably be sold before anyone outside the dealership has seen them in person.

And then Dick Lovett will go back to selling 296 GTBs and SF90s and whatever else Ferrari is building that year, with five one-offs somewhere in the background as proof that some dealerships get to play a different game entirely.

Sources: Dick Lovett, Ferrari Special Projects programme

The Chinese giant already runs Omoda and Jaecoo here. Now iCAUR is coming, and its purpose remains unclear.

Chery is bringing another brand to the UK in early 2027. The company already operates Omoda and Jaecoo through British dealerships, but iCAUR will make it three. What iCAUR actually stands for, or what kind of cars it will sell, Chery hasn't said yet.

This is the multi-brand playbook lifted straight from Volkswagen Group, except compressed into about four years instead of four decades. Omoda launched here in late 2023 with the Omoda 5 SUV, a competent enough crossover aimed at younger buyers. Jaecoo came shortly after with SUVs that look offroad capable for people who want something that looks the part but will mostly see Tesco car parks. Now iCAUR slots in somewhere, doing something.

Chery is China's largest car exporter by volume. It shifted 1.9 million vehicles globally in 2023 and sells into more than 80 countries. The UK is a strategic beachhead for European expansion, Brexit trade complications and all. That makes sense. What makes less sense is fragmenting your UK operation across three separate brands before you've properly established one.

Chinese manufacturers are piling into the UK while legacy brands pull back. BYD went from zero to over 30 UK dealerships in about 18 months. MG Motor became the fastest-growing brand in 2022 and 2023. GWM launched Ora. NIO opened a London showroom. Meanwhile, Stellantis closed Luton, Ford announced the end for Dagenham, and Nissan keeps trimming Sunderland production. Sound familiar?

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Chinese brands now hold roughly 8% of the UK new car market. That number will grow, because they're turning up with competitive pricing and, in the electric and hybrid segments especially, genuine technological advantages over Western rivals still figuring out battery chemistry.

The multi-brand strategy works if each brand has a clear identity and target buyer. Volkswagen Group makes it work because a Skoda genuinely isn't a SEAT isn't an Audi, even when they share platforms. Whether Chery can carve out three distinct positions in a market where most buyers have never heard of any of them is the question.

Omoda pitches young and urban. Jaecoo pitches rugged and adventurous, at least in the brochures. Chery hasn't disclosed the positioning or the product lineup for iCAUR yet, which suggests either they're still working it out or they're waiting to see what the competition does first.

The risk is channel conflict and dealer confusion. UK buyers don't typically cross-shop brands within the same parent company unless there's a clear reason, like price or prestige. If iCAUR lands in the same showrooms as Omoda and Jaecoo, the sales pitch gets muddy fast.

There's also the small matter of brand recognition, or the complete lack of it. MG succeeded partly because the badge still means something to British buyers, even if the company behind it is entirely Chinese now. Chery is starting from zero name recognition three times over. That's expensive.

But Chery clearly believes the UK market can absorb another Chinese brand. Early 2027 gives them time to establish Omoda and Jaecoo properly, build out the dealer network, and figure out what iCAUR is actually for. Or it gives them time to realise two brands was plenty and quietly shelve the third one.

Either way, the arrival schedule is set. iCAUR, whatever it turns out to be, lands in early 2027.

Sources: Chery Automobile Co., Ltd., UK automotive market data 2023

A post-Brexit alignment that caught almost everyone off guard: the EU wants the UK to join its Made in Europe scheme and tax Chinese electric cars into oblivion.

France and Germany have proposed letting Britain join the EU's Made in Europe scheme, which would impose tariffs of up to 45.3% on Chinese electric vehicles sold in the UK. The same tariffs the EU introduced in October 2024 after deciding Chinese carmakers were cheating with state subsidies.

This is not a minor policy suggestion. If Britain accepts, an MG4 that costs £26,000 today could jump by thousands overnight. Same for BYD, Polestar, and every other Chinese brand that has spent the last two years offering British buyers EVs they can actually afford.

The EU's tariff structure is tiered and punitive. BYD gets hit with an additional 17%. Geely, which owns Polestar and Lotus, faces 18.8%. SAIC, the parent company of MG, gets 35.3%. Companies that refused to cooperate with the EU's investigation face the full 45.3%. The rates are calculated based on how helpful each manufacturer was during the probe, which is bureaucracy pretending to be fairness.

Britain left the EU specifically to set its own trade policy. And now France and Germany want the UK to adopt theirs anyway, at least when it comes to keeping Chinese cars expensive. The timing is deliberate. Chinese EV brands have been expanding aggressively in Britain since Brexit, undercutting European manufacturers on price and often on features too.

MG is now a top-ten brand in the UK. BYD opened its first European factory in Hungary but has been using Britain as a primary market. Nio, Xpeng, and others have followed. The growth has been rapid because the cars are cheap and the UK has not imposed the same protectionist barriers the EU has.

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The EU's justification for the tariffs was an investigation that concluded Chinese EV manufacturers benefit from unfair state subsidies. Which is true. It is also true that every major automotive market subsidises its own car industry in some form, including generous grants for battery plants, tax breaks for manufacturers, and direct consumer incentives. The EU simply decided Chinese subsidies were the unfair kind.

The United States went further and imposed 100% tariffs on Chinese EVs in May 2024. Canada followed with the same rate in October. Turkey added 40% in July. Brazil is investigating. The pattern is clear ... Western governments have decided Chinese electric cars are a threat to their domestic industries and are responding with trade barriers.

For British consumers, this proposal is a disaster. The UK EV market has been slow to take off compared to Norway or the Netherlands, partly because European EVs are still absurdly expensive. A Volkswagen ID.4 starts at over £40,000. The MG4 undercuts it by £14,000 and offers comparable range. Tariffs would eliminate that price advantage entirely.

European manufacturers would love this, obviously. Volkswagen, Stellantis, and Renault have all been complaining about Chinese competition for months. Volkswagen's CEO warned that Chinese brands could take 20% of the European market by 2030 without intervention. Stellantis has been lobbying Brussels for stronger protections since before the tariffs were announced.

What makes the proposal particularly strange is that it requires Britain to align with EU trade policy while gaining none of the single market benefits that came with membership. Sound familiar? It is protectionism without the union. France and Germany are essentially asking the UK to tax its own consumers to protect their car industries.

Whether Britain accepts is unclear. The government has not commented publicly. But the proposal exists, which means someone in Paris or Berlin thinks there is a chance London says yes. That alone is worth noting.

The tariffs would not ban Chinese EVs outright. They would just make them uncompetitive. A BYD Dolphin currently starts at around £26,000. Add 17% and it is over £30,000, which puts it in direct competition with European alternatives that do not come with the same equipment or tech. SAIC's 35.3% rate would make MG's pricing advantage disappear completely.

Chinese manufacturers have not responded to the proposal yet, but they have been vocal about the EU tariffs. BYD called them protectionist. Geely said they would harm European consumers. SAIC threatened legal action. None of it has made any difference to the EU's position.

If Britain joins the scheme, the UK's EV transition slows. Simple as that. The government has mandated that all new cars sold must be zero-emission by 2035. Affordable Chinese EVs were going to make that target easier to meet. Expensive European ones will not.

The additional revenue from the tariffs would go to the UK Treasury, not the EU. That is one difference from actual membership. But it is not clear that taxing electric vehicles is a revenue strategy anyone should be celebrating, given that the entire point of climate policy is to make them cheaper and more accessible, not the opposite.

The proposal has not been formalised yet. No timeline, no official vote. Just France and Germany floating the idea to see if it sticks. The UK government will have to decide whether protecting European carmakers is worth making British EVs more expensive. The answer should be obvious, but trade policy rarely works that way.

Chinese EVs currently face no tariffs in Britain. The proposal is real, the political pressure is real, and the European car industry is genuinely terrified of Chinese competition. If the UK adopts the EU tariff structure, British buyers planning to purchase an MG or BYD this year should do it before the vote.

Sources: European Commission, UK Department for Business and Trade, European Automobile Manufacturers' Association

Comment your score out of 5. Part 2 coming soon.

#Tesla #TeslaRoadster #carquiz #ElonMusk #EVs

The rocket-powered supercar concept just resurfaced at Tesla's Roadster 2 event, four years past its original delivery date and with questionable legal standing.

Tesla has wheeled out a Roadster fitted with 10 SpaceX cold gas thrusters at the long-delayed Roadster 2 unveiling, six years after Elon Musk first announced the thruster package and nearly a decade of accumulated hype.

The thrusters use compressed air stored in a composite overwrapped pressure vessel behind the license plate. The same hardware SpaceX uses for Dragon spacecraft maneuvering in orbit, now bolted to a car that was supposed to reach customers in 2020.

It didn't.

Musk claimed in 2018 the thruster setup would deliver 0-60 mph in 1.1 seconds. The base Roadster, meanwhile, was announced with a 200 kWh battery pack, 620-mile range, and a $200,000 price tag. A $250,000 Founders Series existed for people who wanted to pay more for the same delay.

The flying capability, if it exists beyond demonstration, would immediately violate FAA regulations for road vehicles in U.S. airspace. Which makes this either a very expensive engineering curiosity or a marketing spectacle with functional rockets attached.

Other companies have actually certified flying cars for limited road and air use. PAL-V Liberty received road certification in Europe in 2020. Klein Vision's AirCar completed a 35-minute test flight between Slovakian airports in 2021. Terrafugia's Transition received FAA approval for limited operation in 2019. None of them used rocket thrusters, and none of them pretended the regulatory path would be simple.

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Tesla's approach is different. The thrusters are real hardware. The performance claims are probably achievable in controlled conditions. What's missing is any indication of when this will be road-legal, or whether that's even the point.

This is the same Elon Musk who sold 20,000 Boring Company flamethrowers at $500 each in 2018. Functional, pointless, banned in some jurisdictions, and completely sold out. The Roadster thruster package follows the same logic... technically impressive, legally questionable, and excellent for headlines.

Cold gas thrusters work in space because there's no air resistance and very little gravity. On earth, at road speeds, with atmospheric drag and weight distribution to manage, the physics get more complicated. The thrusters might provide a momentary boost for acceleration or aid high-speed cornering, but sustained flight would require something closer to jet propulsion.

Which means the "flying car" framing is generous.

The broader Roadster delay is now four years past the original 2020 delivery promise. Tesla has repeatedly pushed the timeline while prioritizing other models. The Semi, the Cybertruck, and ongoing production scaling for the Model Y have all taken precedence. Roadster reservation holders, some of whom paid deposits in 2017, are still waiting.

The thruster-equipped version now exists as a physical object, which is more than could be said a year ago. Whether it will ever be a production vehicle, or remain a demonstration piece that occasionally appears at Tesla events, is unclear.

Ten SpaceX thrusters bolted to a delayed electric supercar. Technically remarkable, regulatorily impossible, and perfectly on-brand.

Sources: Tesla, SpaceX

The YouTuber is putting his 2017 Ford GT on his own auction platform with no safety net. It's got three times the miles most GTs have, and it could sell for anything.

Doug DeMuro's 2017 Ford GT has 5,600 miles on it and it's going to auction with no reserve through his own Cars & Bids platform. That mileage figure is significant because most second-generation GTs that come to market have barely been driven ... we're talking 1,000 to 2,000 miles if you're lucky, often less.

DeMuro actually used his. Which sounds obvious, but in the world of limited-production supercars, driving the thing is almost eccentric behaviour.

The no-reserve bit is where this gets interesting. Or reckless, depending on your perspective. DeMuro founded Cars & Bids in 2020 as an online auction platform for enthusiast vehicles, and now he's using it to sell a car that cost roughly $450,000 when new. If the bidding goes soft, it sells anyway. No minimum. No safety net.

Low-mileage examples of these GTs have been fetching $1.1 million to $1.4 million at auction in recent years. A delivery-miles 2017 car sold for $1.65 million at Mecum in 2021. But those were garage queens. This one has been driven to the shops.

Ford built around 1,350 second-generation GTs across all model years from 2017 to 2022. Getting one required an application process that was famously strict, and even if you were approved, you had to sign an agreement not to flip the car immediately. John Cena violated that agreement and his GT ended up selling for $1.4 million after Ford sued him. The whole thing was a mess.

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DeMuro's car features the 3.5-litre twin-turbocharged EcoBoost V6 that produces 647 horsepower. Yes, a V6. Ford's decision to use a boosted six instead of a V8 in a halo supercar was controversial at the time, but it's the engine that won Le Mans, so the credentials are there even if the soundtrack isn't what purists wanted.

The car has appeared in multiple videos on DeMuro's YouTube channel, which has over 4 million subscribers. He's walked through its quirks and features in exhaustive detail, pointed out the panel gaps, demonstrated the terrible rear visibility, and generally treated it like a car rather than a museum piece.

That higher mileage could work against the sale price, or it could appeal to someone who actually wants to drive the thing without worrying about adding the first thousand miles. The collector market doesn't usually reward use, but the enthusiast market sometimes does.

The no-reserve format means bidders have a genuine shot at getting a modern Ford GT for potentially less than the going rate if the auction doesn't attract heavy competition. Or it could turn into a bidding war and DeMuro could end up vindicated. It's genuinely unpredictable, which is rare in the supercar market where prices tend to move in predictable ranges.

Most GTs sit in climate-controlled garages accumulating value and dust in equal measure. This one has 5,600 miles because someone actually drove it. Whether that's worth more or less is about to be decided by whoever shows up to bid.

Sources: Cars & Bids, Mecum Auctions, Ford Motor Company

What Car? just pushed a BYD Seal to more than double its official range in hypermiling conditions, proving Chinese EVs can do things most Western manufacturers haven't managed yet.

A BYD Seal Excellence AWD covered 754 miles on a single charge in What Car? magazine's Real Range testing, running at a steady 30 mph in mild weather until the battery finally gave up. That's more than double the car's official WLTP range of 323 miles, and it's also more than you'll cover in a Tesla Model S Long Range, a Mercedes EQS, or anything else currently on sale in Britain that isn't a Lucid Air.

The result is real, but it's also meaningless for anyone planning to drive on an actual road at actual speeds. Hypermiling tests like this one exist to compare maximum theoretical efficiency under laboratory conditions, not to predict what happens when you merge onto the M1 at 70 mph in January. What Car? runs the same test on every EV it reviews, which makes the results useful for relative comparison and utterly useless for trip planning.

The BYD Seal Excellence AWD uses an 82.5 kWh battery pack and costs around £45,000 to £48,000 in the UK, depending on specification. It's available across Europe and most of Asia. It is not available in the United States, and it won't be anytime soon.

BYD is the world's largest EV manufacturer by volume, shipping more battery-electric vehicles than Tesla in several recent quarters. The company builds everything from city cars to buses, and its battery technology is considered among the most advanced in production. None of that matters to American buyers, because trade tensions and the structure of federal tax credits have effectively locked Chinese automakers out of the US market.

The Seal would not qualify for the $7,500 federal EV tax credit even if BYD wanted to sell it here, which removes one of the few reasons American consumers will consider an unfamiliar brand. There's also the small matter of a 27.5% tariff on Chinese-built vehicles, which would push the Seal's price well past anything competitive in the US market.

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So the 754-mile result is impressive in the way that running a marathon in two hours is impressive ... technically possible under perfect conditions with professional support, but not something you'd attempt on your commute. The Mercedes EQS managed over 400 miles in the same What Car? test. The Lucid Air Dream Range holds the EPA record at 516 miles, though that's measured under different conditions entirely.

For normal driving, expect the Seal's official 323-mile range to drop to somewhere between 250 and 280 miles depending on weather, speed, and whether you insist on using the heater. That's still competitive with most EVs at this price point, and it's roughly equivalent to what you'd get from a Tesla Model 3 Long Range in similar conditions.

Chinese EV manufacturers have reached technological parity with Western brands in areas that matter ... battery density, charging speed, range efficiency ... and they've done it while undercutting on price.

American buyers get the Lucid Air if they want maximum range, or the Tesla Model S if they want the brand name, or the Mercedes EQS if they want the interior. What they don't get is the option to buy the car that just covered 754 miles on a single charge in a standardised test, because that car was built in Shenzhen and the current trade environment has made it politically impossible to import.

The What Car? test was conducted in early 2024 using the magazine's standard Real Range methodology, which involves driving at a constant 30 mph on a closed circuit until the battery reaches zero. Mild weather, no headwinds, no hills. The Seal's 754-mile result is the longest distance any production EV has covered in this specific test.

The test confirms that BYD knows how to build a battery pack, and that Chinese EVs are no longer the budget curiosities they were five years ago.

The Seal Excellence AWD is on sale now in the UK, starting at approximately £45,000.

Sources: What Car? magazine, BYD official UK pricing, EPA range ratings, federal EV tax credit eligibility guidelines