Welcome to our new Five Videos on Friday. Caution, some of these videos will cause serious distraction from the work you’re actually meant to be doing. Enjoy.
THANK GOODNESS ITS FRIDAY. And to celebrate, Practical Motoring is kicking off a new tradition … will be trawling the ‘Net for a selection of cool motoring videos. And, no, they won’t all be Russian dashcam footage, or celebrities climbing out of supercars – actually, we won’t run anything like that – we’re not Buzzfeed … Indeed, I think today’s selection gives a nice indication of the sort of stuff we’ll be running.
But we don’t want this to be a one-way street. So, if you’ve come across a cool video you think we’d all enjoy, send us the YouTube link (do keep them clean, though). In the meantime, enjoy our Five Videos on Friday.
1. Range Rove Evoque takes on a skate park
In an effort to show that the Range Rover Evoque is more than just a pretty face, Land Rover China got one of its LR Experience drivers to get behind the wheel of an Evoque and drive it around the biggest skate park in China. What else needs to be said other than, don’t try this at your local skate park…
2. 2016 Ford Mustang GT350 SVT caught testing at the Nurburgring – turn the volume up!
We’ve seen the last Ford Falcon XR8, but we won’t get the Ford Mustang in Australia until next year and we don’t yet know how much it’ll cost or exactly what engines it’ll run when it arrives. That said, we do know that Ford is testing something tasty. Meet the 2016 Ford Mustang SVT/GT350 which was filmed earlier this week running around the Nürburgring Nordschleife. Despite the camouflage it looks a whole lot angrier than the garden-variety Mustang – you can see the ventilated bonnet, the quad pipes, the big rear wing and fat wheels. Oh, and then there’s the noise.
3. Mowing, I mean, driving, no, mowing … Eau Rouge with the Honda Mean Mower
Honda’s Mean Mower is officially the world’s fastest lawn mower – it’s got a Guinness Book of World Records certificate and everything. But, it’s one thing to go flat-out in a straight line… What about taking on one of the world’s best race tracks, well, a section of it at least. That’s exactly what Honda got its World Touring Car Championship driver, Tiago Monteiro (Castrol Honda Racing) to do. Climbing onto the lawn mower, Montieiro took on the legendary ‘Eau Rouge’ corner and hill climb at Spa Francorchamps.
4. This is how you test a wheel that’ll handle 1700km/h-plus
The Bloodhound SSC, like our home-grown Aussie Invader, is chasing the world land speed record and intends to hit around 1700km/h on a dry, salt lake bed (Lake Eyre is where our Rosco McGlashan has done his work) and so the wheel has to be up to scratch. To make sure it can handle spinning at around 10,000-plus revolutions per mninute, the Bloodhound team have taken their wheels to a Rolls-Royce facility normally used to test jet turbine blades. See, the faster the wheel spins, the hotter it gets, thanks to the friction of the rim against the air … at full speed the wheel is likely to heat up to around 100-degrees C, but at around 150-degrees C the aluminium wheel will begin to lose its structural rigidity and that’s a problem when you’re trying to break the sound barrier on land.
5. Don’t text and drive…
Use of mobile phones continues to increase and drivers, especially young drivers, seem to be totally unaware of the risks involved. Indeed, a recent survey by Ford UK has found that one in three young Brits took a photo of themselves while driving. Yes, this video has been around for awhile and got plenty of airtime when it hit the ‘Net, but in a brilliant piece of creative work, Volkswagen has used cinema audiences to alert them to the dangers of using a mobile phone while driving… And turn your mobile off when you’re driving.
that Mustang sounds AWESOME. Don’t even need pictures.