See all Motoring NewsSweet mother of mine, it’s April 1st and the car companies have gone into silly mode in order to out-do each other with some ridiculous April Fool’s gags.
Used to be that only BMW got up to this ‘fake press release’ nonsense, but more and more marques are weighing in with their own attempts at comedy ‘gold’. So here, in brief format, is a round-up of what we’ve got this year.
Let’s start with BMW and MINI, then, with both the UK and German PR departments releasing their own takes on the stylish hatchback. The UK arm went with the MINI Hipster, revealed in that London hotbed of such types, Hoxton, with the car supposedly featuring ‘Instagram filtered windows, a twin-deck cassette player, fixed-gear drivetrain, upcycled alloy wheels and stonewash denim upholstery’. Germany hit back with a Scissor Doors stunt, which… wasn’t really that funny.
Over to Skoda, who went with a wearable doggy version of the umbrella you can find in the doors of the Superb. This ‘mutts-have accessory’ (sigh) is apparently made out of Unobtainium (the inhabitants of Pandora won’t be happy about that) and the expert quoted was a Dr Jacques Rustle. Good grief.
It gets worse. Lexus said it would release a Variable Load Coupling Rear Orientation (V-LCRO) feature to help people stay in place in their seats, while Opel promised us a clockwork-powered Adam C that would be the ‘world’s first full-sized production kinetic car’. Amusingly, no one from Opel’s press department was willing to put their name at the bottom of this release.
Let’s leave the last word to Honda, in the UK again, who came up with a silly jape about emoji-bearing number plates, with Shigastu Baka (we’ve checked on Google translate and this apparently means nothing) assigned the role of First Officer of Licences at Honda UK. First Officer of Licences, eh? The fools…