A routine maintenance visit for the Formula 1-derived hypercar cost more than most people's annual salary.

A Mercedes-AMG One owner recently discovered what it truly costs to maintain a Formula 1 car disguised as a street legal hypercar. After driving just 115 miles, their routine service bill came to $44,100, setting what may be the most expensive oil change in automotive history at $383 per mile driven.

The eye-watering service cost reflects the reality of owning one of the 275 Mercedes-AMG One hypercars ever built. With a $2.72 million base price, the car uses a 1.6-liter V6 hybrid powertrain lifted directly from Lewis Hamilton's championship-winning Formula 1 cars, complete with the maintenance requirements that come with such technology.

The AMG One's 1,063 horsepower comes from combining its F1-derived internal combustion engine with four electric motors, but this cutting-edge setup demands Formula 1-specification lubricants and fluids that cost exponentially more than conventional automotive products. The engine oil alone requires specialized synthetic compounds designed for the extreme temperatures and pressures of Grand Prix racing.

Mercedes-AMG's official guidance suggests owners budget $50,000 to $75,000 annually for routine maintenance, regardless of mileage. The service intervals mirror F1 requirements rather than typical road car schedules. Engine oil changes are required every 6,000 miles or 12 months, transmission service every 15,000 miles, and the battery cooling system needs specialized attention every 24 months.

Beyond the mechanical components, even consumables carry hypercar premiums. A set of Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 R tires costs approximately $8,000, while comprehensive insurance coverage runs $25,000 to $40,000 annually. First-year depreciation typically hits 15 to 20 percent of the purchase price, meaning owners lose around $400,000 in value within months of delivery.

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The $44,100 service bill breaks down the true cost of translating F1 technology to public roads. Every component from the turbocharger to the MGU-K energy recovery system requires specialist knowledge and tools found only at authorized AMG facilities. The technicians themselves need training comparable to Formula 1 mechanics, commanding premium labor rates that reflect their specialized expertise.

This maintenance reality has created an unexpected secondary market dynamic. Some AMG One owners are choosing to treat their cars as static investments rather than driving experiences, keeping mileage minimal to avoid the astronomical running costs. Others are discovering that the $2.72 million purchase price was merely the entry fee to a far more expensive ownership experience.

The service costs also highlight the growing divide between traditional supercars and modern hypercars. While a Ferrari or Lamborghini might cost $5,000 to $10,000 for major service work, the AMG One's F1 heritage pushes maintenance into entirely different financial territory. The technology that enables 217 mph top speeds and sub-seven-minute Nürburgring lap times comes with a price that makes the original sticker shock seem modest.

For context, the $44,100 service bill after 115 miles means this single maintenance visit cost more than the median annual household income in most countries. The owner essentially paid the equivalent of a luxury sedan's purchase price to change fluids in a car they had barely driven. Such figures make the AMG One's ownership proposition clear: this is transportation for those who measure wealth in hundreds of millions, not mere millions.

Sources: Mercedes-AMG official documentation, automotive industry maintenance cost analyses from various publications including Road & Track and Car and Driver coverage of hypercar ownership costs.

Troy, New York is a city of around 51,000 people on the Hudson River. It is now also a case study in what happens when a police department installs a surveillance network without asking anyone.

The Troy Police Department began a pilot programme of Flock Safety automated licence plate reader cameras in 2021, later expanding to 26 devices across the city. Flock cameras go well beyond reading plates. Depending on the model, they can identify a vehicle's make, model, colour, bodywork damage, roof racks, window stickers and miscellaneous contents. They feed into a national database operated by Flock Safety, a company whose technology is now deployed in more than 4,000 communities across the United States. The Troy police department did not inform the city council it was doing any of this. Residents found out through their own observation and organised protests at City Hall in March 2026.

The political situation made things combustible. Troy has a Republican mayor, Carmella Mantello, and a city council composed entirely of Democrats, led by President Sue Steele. On 19 March, the council held a public forum at which more than two dozen residents spoke in opposition. The council tabled a resolution to extend the Flock contract, citing unresolved questions about privacy, data handling, and the legality of the original procurement. Under Troy's city charter, council approval is required for expenditures over $35,000. The Flock contract costs $156,000 across two years. The council's position was that no valid contract existed because the council had never authorised one.

Troy's deputy police chief, Steven Barker, told reporters the department had followed standard procurement procedure. He said the cameras are used in almost every investigation the detective bureau pursues and had contributed to solving two homicides. Data collected is deleted after 30 days, and the department had already paused its participation in Flock's national database following the public outcry in March.

Mayor Mantello's response to the council's move to withhold payment was to declare a public safety emergency on 1 April, using powers under the city charter that allow a mayor to summon and employ additional resources for protective measures during an emergency. The council's position was that no emergency conditions existed and that the declaration was a violation of the charter in its own right.

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The council sued Mantello over the declaration. Mantello maintained that the council was holding public safety hostage.

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As of 20 May 2026, a partial compromise has emerged. Troy has implemented a set of guardrails around the cameras including an annual audit of data collected by Flock, restrictions on data sharing to within agencies on a case by case basis, and the introduction of Local Law 3, an ordinance brought by Councilmember Nancy McKee that codifies several of the new policies. Council President Steele described the compromise as a step toward addressing privacy and safety concerns while the broader dispute continues.

The broader dispute continues because the underlying questions have not been resolved. Flock Safety's cameras are deployed in thousands of American cities, and the pattern in Troy — installation without public consultation, contract renewal without council authorisation, executive override when the legislature objects — is not unique to Troy. The cameras have been used elsewhere for immigration enforcement, for tracking individuals making medical appointments across state lines, and for building movement profiles on people who have committed no crime. In Troy, a man was tracked 526 times without any record of why.

Surveillance infrastructure rarely gets dismantled once it is in place. The compromise reached in Troy this week is guardrails on a system that exists because nobody asked the public whether they wanted it.

For more on how automated surveillance is reshaping enforcement and civil liberties, see GaukMotorBuzz's ongoing coverage at gaukmotorbuzz.com/drivers-revenge.

Sources

• WAMC (Northeast Public Radio) — Troy mayor declares public safety emergency amid Flock camera debate
• WAMC — Troy officials move toward Flock cameras compromise
• Spectrum News 1 — Troy mayor declares safety emergency to keep licence plate readers operational
• CBS6 Albany — Troy mayor declares public safety emergency to keep Flock cameras operational
• The Mirror US — State of Emergency declared in NY town after police install dozens of AI cameras without permission
• Washington Post — City's AI licence plate cameras led to an uproar and a state of emergency (paywalled; facts independently verified via WAMC and Spectrum News)
• Jalopnik background — Flock Safety shady business practices
• Jalopnik — Police sued for tracking man 526 times

Here is what AMG engineers apparently spent years perfecting for the most powerful car the company has ever built: a playlist.

The new Mercedes-AMG GT 4-Door Coupe was unveiled on 19 May. It is genuinely extraordinary hardware. Three YASA axial flux motors, two on the rear axle and one on the front, produce 1,153 horsepower in GT 63 specification. The AMG.EA dedicated electric platform can apparently accommodate over 1,300 horsepower when someone decides to turn it all the way up. It does zero to sixty in around two seconds. It charges at 600kW. By any rational measure of what a performance machine is supposed to do, this thing does it.

And then they piped a fake V8 through the speakers and hoped nobody would notice.

AMG calls the system AMGFORCE S+. It uses over 1,600 individual audio samples, recombined in real time based on throttle inputs, speed and driving behaviour. It simulates a gearbox with nine ratios that does not exist, with paddle shifters on the wheel that generate fake upshifts, fake rev drops, fake burble on overrun. The seat motors vibrate to simulate drivetrain shudder. There is a fake tachometer on the dashboard with a fake 7,000rpm redline. The sound system activates when you plug in the charger. It makes a noise when you unlock the car. They got the sound right down to mimicking the AMG GT R's V8 bogging down and running out of revs, because apparently the aspiration here was to accurately reproduce the limitations of a combustion engine in a machine that has none.

This is not a criticism of electric vehicles. The AMG GT is extraordinarily fast. The problem is that Mercedes knows it has removed something that mattered and its solution was to build an elaborate machine for pretending it is still there.

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The soul of a performance car is not a noise. It is the relationship between what is happening mechanically and what you feel and hear as a result. A V8 sounds the way it does because eight pistons are actually firing, fuel is actually burning, valves are actually opening and closing and all of that mechanical event is escaping through an exhaust system as organised chaos. It is not decorative. It is the car telling you what it is doing. Synthetic audio is the car telling you a story about something that is not happening.

Electrek's reviewer, who was given an early test ride, called it the best fake V8 sound in the industry. That is probably true. It is also a sentence that would have sounded absurd to anyone who bought an AMG in 2005.

Other manufacturers have tried versions of this. Dodge built the Fratzonic chambered exhaust for the Charger Daytona, a physical resonator that generates actual sound pressure rather than simply broadcasting recorded noise, which at least has the virtue of being real. Hyundai's Ioniq 5 N projects sound outward as well as inward. Those are engineering responses to the same problem. What AMG has done is different in kind. It is a simulation of a previous product, down to the fake mechanical imperfections, running on top of a genuinely new one. Mercedes CEO Ola Källenius, who used to work at AMG, called it proof that AMG moves the bar rather than just meets it. The bar being referred to appears to be the fidelity of the illusion.

The GT 55 arrives at US dealers later this year with 805 horsepower. The GT 63 at 1,153 horsepower follows in early 2027. Pricing will be six figures, in line with the previous generation. You will be able to adjust how fake it sounds from the drive mode selector.

The car will be fast. It will be exciting. It will be technically impressive in ways that matter.

It will also be lying to you, constantly, about what it is. And the saddest part is that nobody at Affalterbach thinks that is a problem. They think it is a feature.

Sources

• Electrek — Mercedes unveils AMG GT EV: 1,153hp, 0-60 in 2s, 11-min charge, fake V8 noise
• Carscoops — The 1,153 HP AMG GT's Fake V8 Has To Be Heard To Be Believed
• Jalopnik — The New Mercedes-AMG GT 4-Door Coupe's Synthesized V8 Sounds Might Be The Best EV 'Engine' Noises Yet
• Wheelfront — AMG Goes Electric: 1,153 HP and a Fake V8
• Autoblog — Mercedes-AMG's Electric Super Sedan Has a Fake V8 Sound and Over 1,300 HP
• ArenaEV — Mercedes-AMG GT swaps V8 for high-tech sound and power

The original DeLorean was built in Belfast, powered by a French engine, designed by an Italian and funded by the British government. The one doing donuts in front of Samson and Goliath last week runs a Chevrolet V8 and belongs to a French drift driver from Lyon. The DeLorean has always been an unlikely coalition.

Alexandre Claudin is a Monster Energy athlete and competitive drifter, previously seen on Netflix's Hyperdrive series. His DeLorean build started life as a standard DMC-12 and has been substantially reworked around a Chevrolet LS V8 installed in the nose in place of the original PRV V6 that sat behind the rear axle in production cars, shared with the Peugeot 604, the Volvo 262C and several other forgettable saloons of the era. The conversion relocates the engine to the nose, rewrites the weight distribution entirely, and makes it properly capable of sustained oversteer rather than merely threatening it.

Earlier this month Claudin brought the car to Belfast for a tour of the city where the DMC-12 was born. The route took in City Hall, the Titanic Museum, and a mural in the city depicting the DeLorean in full Back to the Future specification with flux capacitor attached. The headline stop was in front of the Harland & Wolff dock cranes, Samson and Goliath, where Claudin put the car through its paces and left tyre marks on the ground in view of the most photographed skyline in Northern Ireland.

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The choice of backdrop is not accidental. The Titanic was built in that shipyard. It was the most ambitious industrial project Belfast had ever attempted and it ended at the bottom of the North Atlantic. The DeLorean factory opened in Dunmurry in West Belfast in 1978 on the strength of a deal John Z. DeLorean brokered with the British government, promising thousands of jobs in a city grinding through the worst years of the Troubles. The factory had separate entry gates for Catholic and Protestant workers. It produced around 9,000 cars between 1981 and 1982 before the company collapsed, DeLorean himself was arrested on cocaine trafficking charges, and the whole enterprise was declared a failure.

The film franchise that followed is the reason that failure became a cultural institution. Back to the Future made the DMC-12 the most recognisable car of its generation to people who had never sat in one, because the stainless steel body, the doors that open upward, and the general impression of something that looked like it arrived from somewhere else in time all translated perfectly to the screen. Belfast held onto that. The car is in the Ulster Transport Museum. There is a DeLorean Eurofest scheduled for June at the Stormont buildings and the old factory test track. The city claimed the car long after the company was done with it.

Claudin's V8 version is not a restoration. It is something more honest than that. The original was underpowered, unreliable, and overpriced for what it delivered dynamically. Nobody is pretending otherwise. Dropping a Chevrolet LS into the nose and pointing it at a set of cones is what you do when you want to find out what the shape was always capable of, stripped of the compromises that sank it.

Two of Belfast's most famous exports ended in disaster. One is at the bottom of the ocean. The other is doing donuts outside the cranes that built the ship.

Sources

• CarThrottle — Check Out this Drift-Spec DeLorean Ripping Around its Hometown (sole available source; used per house rules)
• Alexandre Claudin — YouTube channel
• DeLorean Eurofest 2026 — deloreanrevival.com
• Ulster Transport Museum — ireland.com listing
• Ireland Before You Die — The DeLorean Factory, Belfast

Tesla's Wade Mode pressurises the battery pack, raises the suspension, and lets a Cybertruck ford shallow freshwater obstacles up to around 32 inches deep. It does not make a 6,600-pound stainless steel vehicle float.

On the evening of Monday 18 May, Grapevine Police and the Grapevine Fire Department were called to Katie's Woods Park Boat Ramp at Grapevine Lake, Texas, where a Tesla Cybertruck was sitting in the water near the shoreline. The driver, identified by CBS Texas as Jimmy Jack McDaniel, told officers he had driven the truck into the lake deliberately, intending to use Wade Mode. The truck became disabled, took on water, and McDaniel and his passenger abandoned it. The Fire Department's Water Rescue Team spent several hours recovering the vehicle, hoisting it out by crane after dark.

McDaniel was arrested and charged with operating a vehicle in a closed section of a park or lake, having no valid boat registration, and multiple water safety equipment violations. As of Tuesday he remained in Grapevine Jail. The Grapevine Police Department added a note to its statement for anyone who might be considering a similar experiment:

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The context here matters. Elon Musk has been telling Cybertruck buyers since 2022 that the vehicle would eventually be capable of crossing rivers, lakes, and seas. He posted on X that it would be waterproof enough to serve briefly as a boat. Tesla's own vice president of vehicle engineering, Lars Moravy, appeared on Jay Leno's Garage and floated the idea that with an outboard motor plugged into the truck's outlet, you could theoretically go boating. None of that is in the owner's manual. What is in the owner's manual is a maximum wade depth of around 32 inches from the bottom of the tyre, designed for crossing a shallow creek or flooded track section, not navigating a lake.

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Tesla's warranty reflects the manual, not Musk's posts. Water damage is not covered. This is not the first time the gap between those two positions has ended badly for a Cybertruck owner. Last year a driver in Truckee, California activated Wade Mode and got stuck, requiring California Highway Patrol assistance. The CHP's response became something of a motto for the situation: Wade Mode is not Submarine Mode. A Cybertruck in Slovakia went into a lake the same way and with the same result. The pattern is consistent enough that it now has a body of incident reports behind it.

The charges McDaniel faces include the boat registration violation, which may be the most efficient summary of what went wrong. If you drive a vehicle into a navigable lake in Texas without registering it as a watercraft, Texas law is not interested in your explanation about what the CEO said on the internet.

The truck weighed more than three tons before it took on water. It was never going anywhere but down.

Sources

• Grapevine Police Department — Official statement via Twitter/X
• CBS Texas — Driver intentionally drove Cybertruck into North Texas lake to use vehicle's "Wade Mode", police say
• WFAA — Driver jailed after driving Tesla Cybertruck into Grapevine Lake
• Electrek — Tesla Cybertruck owner believed Elon Musk when he said it could cross a lake — now he's in jail
• Carscoops — A Cybertruck Owner Just Turned Wade Mode Into Get Arrested Mode In Texas

Nobody went into this war with their eyes shut.

On February 28, the United States and Israel struck Iran. Within days, Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz. Brent crude surged past $100 a barrel. Gasoline prices in the United States climbed by more than $1 a gallon in a single month. As of the middle of May, the average American is paying $4.51 for a regular gallon of unleaded. A new analysis from Brown University's Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs puts the additional fuel bill for American consumers since the war began at more than $40 billion, over $300 per household, and the meter is still running.

That is not a side effect. That is a foreseeable consequence of a decision that was made anyway.

The Strait of Hormuz is the most critical single chokepoint in global energy supply. Around 20 per cent of the world's seaborne oil and a substantial volume of liquefied natural gas pass through it. Military strategists, energy economists, and intelligence agencies all knew exactly what a war with Iran would do to that waterway. Iran's response was not a surprise. It was the obvious move, anticipated for years in planning documents, think tank papers and congressional briefings. The decision to strike Iran was made with that consequence fully visible on the table.

So who benefits?

The six largest Western oil companies, Chevron, Shell, BP, ConocoPhillips, Exxon and TotalEnergies are on course to collectively pocket $94 billion in profit in 2026, according to an Oxfam International analysis. That is an increase of nearly $37 million a day compared to their 2025 earnings. BP called its first quarter 2026 performance "exceptional." Global oil prices have soared more than 50 per cent since the conflict began. Governments that levy fuel taxes calculated as a percentage of the pump price collect more revenue the higher the price climbs, without changing a single line of tax code. And anyone who placed the right trades in energy futures in the weeks before February 28 has had a very good spring.

None of this is unique to this war. We watched the same pattern in 2022 with Russia and Ukraine. We watched it with Covid, where the disruption of supply chains and the pricing power handed to certain industries translated into wealth transfers of a scale that still have not been fully reckoned with. The mechanism is consistent: a crisis arrives, ordinary people absorb the cost, a concentrated group of players absorbs the gain.

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The Brown University researchers who produced the $40 billion figure put it plainly: energy price shocks of this kind function as a broad, unacknowledged tax on households. The difference between an acknowledged tax and an unacknowledged one is that the acknowledged kind comes with a vote. Nobody asked American drivers whether they would like to contribute $300 to cover the fuel cost implications of a military operation conducted in their name.

Asked last week whether the financial strain on American households was influencing his approach to negotiations with Iran, President Trump answered: "Not even a little bit."

There is an argument, a real one that the Strait disruption reflects genuine supply reduction and that higher prices are an inevitable market response. The IEA has called this the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market. The closure is real. The reduced tanker traffic is real. Producers in the Gulf have curtailed output because they have run out of storage. These are not manufactured numbers.

But the scale of corporate profit accumulation during a period of civilian pain is also real. Oxfam's figures show those six companies earning close to $3,000 a second. At the same time, BP has cut investment in renewable energy. Shell has watered down its 2030 climate targets. Exxon has reduced planned spending on cleaner energy projects. Crisis, it turns out, is not universally bad for business.

The $40 billion figure will keep climbing through the summer driving season. Analysts at OilPrice.com already have the running total closer to $45 billion. Prices could reach $5 a gallon if the Strait remains effectively blocked through the northern summer. Spirit Airlines has ceased operations, citing fuel costs. Jet fuel is up 95 per cent since the war began. The cost of groceries, freight and consumer goods is following energy prices upward through every supply chain they touch.

Wars have always been expensive for the people who don't start them. What has changed is how precisely we can now measure who ends up with the bill ... and who ends up with the money.

Sources

• Brown University Watson Institute — The U.S. Energy Cost of the Iran War
• Brown University Costs of War PDF — Research Brief: The U.S. Energy Cost of the Iran War, May 18, 2026
• Oxfam International analysis via Fortune — Activists call out soaring oil and gas profits as energy companies cash in on the Iran war
• Oxfam / CNN — Giant fossil fuel companies made about $12,000 in the time it took you to read this headline
• ABC News — Are oil companies profiting from the Iran war? Experts explain
• Al Jazeera — US faces rising costs with Iran war driving energy prices, inflation higher
• Al Jazeera — Why the oil and gas price shock from the Iran war won't just fade away
• Brookings Institution — Another oil crisis is here. How will American drivers respond?
• OilPrice.com — Higher Oil Prices Have Cost U.S. Consumers $45 Billion Since Iran War Began
• Wikipedia — 2026 Iran war fuel crisis
• Common Dreams — Trump's Iran War Has Already Cost Americans Over $40 Billion Extra on Gas and Diesel

For years, police could arrest you for stealing a car but had to hand back the gadget you used to do it. That loophole is closed.

The Crime and Policing Act 2026 received Royal Assent on 29 April, and among its 70-plus measures is a provision that directly targets the electronics driving the modern car theft epidemic. It is now a criminal offence in England and Wales to make, possess, import, adapt, supply or offer to supply any electronic device that could be used to steal a vehicle or its contents. Conviction carries an unlimited fine, up to five years in prison, or both.

The devices in question are the small, often disguised gadgets that have made keyless car theft devastatingly efficient. Signal relay, repeater and amplifier devices pick up the radio signal from a key fob inside a home, boost it across the gap to the car outside, and trick the vehicle into believing the owner is standing right there with the key. The car unlocks. It starts. The thieves are gone in under a minute without breaking a window or touching a door. Signal jammers serve a parallel purpose, blocking fob signals to prevent the car from locking properly and masking the location of a vehicle tracker after the car has been driven away.

The Metropolitan Police have estimated that electronic devices are involved in more than 60 per cent of car thefts in London. Nationally, tens of thousands of keyless vehicles are taken this way every year.

Until now, the possession of these devices was technically legal. Police could only act once a theft had occurred and could prove the items had been used. Organised gangs exploited that gap with ease. The new law shifts the burden. Under the Act, police can seize devices where the carrier cannot demonstrate a legitimate purpose, without needing to tie them to a completed crime. For equipment with essentially no lawful civilian application, that is a meaningful change.

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The legislation also hands police a new power to enter premises without a warrant where stolen goods, including vehicles and phones, have been tracked by GPS. Previously, recovering a tracked stolen car required time to obtain a warrant. The new provisions require only that an officer has reasonable belief the goods are on the premises and that a senior officer has authorised entry.

Thatcham Research, which has spent more than three decades working alongside government, insurers and manufacturers on vehicle security, welcomed the Act but urged caution about treating it as a complete solution.

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Thatcham's chief research and operations officer Richard Billyeald added that the casual theft and joyriding of the 1980s and 1990s has all but disappeared, with manufacturers having made vehicles far harder for amateurs to steal. The problem now is a different animal entirely: heavily resourced, internationally connected organised criminal networks who combine specialist electronics with sophisticated logistics to move stolen vehicles and parts across borders.

The RAC noted that a quarter of UK drivers have suffered some form of vehicle crime, and supported the new powers. JLR, one of the most targeted manufacturers, has already invested £10 million in preventative technology and confirmed that relay attack resilience was built into its new generation Range Rover and Range Rover Sport, with security updates rolled out free to owners of 2018 onwards models.

The devices are often disguised as bluetooth speakers or children's toys to evade detection. The new law does not require prosecutors to prove the item was ever used. Being found in possession of one without a credible legitimate purpose is now enough.

The law is long overdue. Whether enforcement matches the legislation is another question entirely.

Sources

• UK Government — Crime and Policing Act 2026
• UK Government — Biggest shake up in decades to tackle local crime
• UK Parliament — Crime and Policing Bill receives Royal Assent
• Thatcham Research — Crime and Policing Act 2026 strengthens UK vehicle security
• Fleet World — New UK law combats vehicle theft
• What Car? — Keyless car theft devices banned in new law
• Regit — Why keyless car theft just got harder in the UK

Craft beer has quietly made the maths of drink driving much harder to get right. Most drivers have not caught up.

New research by temporary insurance provider Tempcover has found that 55 per cent of UK motorists have no idea how strong a modern IPA can be, or what that means for their ability to drive legally afterwards. It is a knowledge gap with consequences that go well beyond a breathalyser conversation on the roadside.

IPA has become the most popular beer style in the UK, the first choice for 52 per cent of drinkers according to Tempcover's data. But the range of what falls under that label is enormous. A traditional English IPA can sit anywhere between 3.7 and 7.0 per cent ABV. An American Double IPA pushes that to between 7.5 and 9.5 per cent. That is not a minor variation. A pint of 4.0 per cent lager contains around 2.3 units of alcohol. A pint of 7.0 per cent IPA comes in at close to four units. The legal limit in England, Wales and Northern Ireland is 80 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood. One strong IPA, depending on body weight, metabolism and what you have eaten, can put a driver over it.

Tempcover's head of marketing put the problem in direct terms:

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The timing matters. England and Wales are currently operating under the highest drink drive threshold in Europe, a limit that has not been revised since it was set in the 1960s. That is about to change. The UK government's Road Safety Strategy, published in January 2026, has launched a formal consultation on lowering the limit to 50 milligrams per 100 millilitres of blood, matching Scotland and bringing England and Wales in line with most of Europe. At that threshold, even a single pint of standard strength beer could push a lighter person over. A strong IPA would not be a borderline case. It would be over before the glass was empty.

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The RAC's own data, based on a Freedom of Information request to the DVLA, shows 220,638 motorists currently hold drink driving endorsements on their licences. A conviction stays on the record for 11 years, can double or triple insurance premiums, and some standard insurers will refuse cover altogether. The government's Road Safety Strategy consultation also includes a proposal for an effectively zero limit of 20 milligrams for new and young drivers, effectively making any alcohol before driving off the table entirely.

The beer market has changed enormously in a decade. The ABV range available on tap at any given pub is wider than most drivers appreciate. The session IPA at 4.2 per cent and the hazy double at 8.5 per cent can look identical in the glass. Asking the bar staff what is in it before you drive home is no longer overcautious. Under the proposed new limits, it is essential.

The only number that actually matters is zero.

Sources

• Motoring Research — One pint of IPA could put motorists over drink-drive limit
• Tempcover research (via Motoring Research, as above)
• RAC — Drink driving in the UK
• UK Government Road Safety Strategy consultation — Proposed changes to penalties for motoring offences
• Carwow — Mandatory eye tests to new drink-drive limits: what the UK's road safety shake-up means for you
• Stance Auto — UK Drink Drive Limit 2026: One Drink Could Soon Be Enough to Lose Your Licence

On the afternoon of Friday 15 May 2026, Bluebird K7 rose onto the plane on Coniston Water. The last person to do that was Donald Campbell, on the morning of 4 January 1967, seconds before the boat became airborne, broke apart, and killed him.

59 years is a long time to wait for a moment.

The return was the centrepiece of the Bluebird K7 Festival, which ran from 11 to 17 May at The Boating Centre on the Cumbrian lake. The Lake District National Park Authority granted a rare speed exemption to lift Coniston's usual 10mph limit, clearing the way for K7 to run legally for the first time on home water since that January morning. The festival also fell in the 70th anniversary year of Campbell's first water speed record on the lake, set on 19 September 1956. Four of his seven records were set at Coniston.

The man at the controls was Dave Warby, an Australian water speed challenger and son of Ken Warby, who set the outright world water speed record of 317.59mph at Blowering Dam in 1978. That record has never been broken. Ken died in February 2023. Dave is currently developing Spirit of Australia II with the aim of surpassing his father's mark. The symmetry of asking him to pilot K7 was not lost on anyone. Bluebird K7 was the direct inspiration for Ken Warby's record attempt. The two families have been intertwined since Campbell's chief engineer Leo Villa corresponded with Ken during the original Spirit of Australia build. On stepping into the cockpit, Dave Warby said he had felt both Donald Campbell and his father alongside him.

The week did not unfold smoothly. K7 was not lowered into the water until four hours after the advertised start on the opening day, drawing frustration from the thousands who had gathered on the shoreline, some of whom had waited decades for the sight. Early runs were slow familiarisation passes. Then the boat's new Orpheus 101 engine, a recent replacement, revealed a problem with its fuel control limiters. Engineers worked through Wednesday night. On Thursday, K7 made a single slow run before being pulled from the water for further work.

Friday afternoon settled it. Dave Warby took the controls at 16:00 BST. K7 came off the plane, reached a reported 100 mph, and Warby backed off for further checks. It was not the 150 mph the festival had been promoting. It did not matter.

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Campbell's daughter Gina was on the shoreline through much of the week. She had described her father as someone who would have been delighted at the speed exemption approval that made the festival possible. Her father's mascot, the teddy bear Mr Whoppit, was back in position in the cockpit for the return. It was in the cockpit during the 1967 crash. It was found floating on the surface after Campbell died.

Campbell's nephew Don Wales watched K7 touch the water on the opening day:

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K7 had been raised from the lake bed in 2001, along with Campbell's remains, and rebuilt over six years by a volunteer team on Tyneside. It ran for the first time since 1967 in 2018, at Loch Fad on the Isle of Bute. A protracted ownership dispute followed, settled out of court in 2024, with the boat returned to the Ruskin Museum at Coniston and housed in a dedicated hangar. The festival was the museum's first opportunity to run K7 on the water it was built to conquer.

Ruskin Museum chairman Jeff Carroll said after the opening day that the team hoped to inspire a new generation of engineers, and to remind local schoolchildren that a place like Coniston could be the site of significant world history.

In the 1960s, Campbell spent weeks waiting at Coniston for calm water, with mechanical problems arriving whenever conditions finally did. Crowds came anyway. Some things do not change.

The faster runs are still to come. That story is not finished yet.

Sources

• Ruskin Museum — Pilots announced for the return of Donald Campbell's Bluebird K7 to Coniston Water in 2026
• Powerboat News — Bluebird K7 Returns to Coniston Water for First Time Since 1967
• Powerboat News — Bluebird K7 Planes on Coniston Water for First Time Since 1967
• Powerboat News — Bluebird K7: Organisers Defend Day One at Coniston
• Powerboat News — Bluebird K7 Festival 2026: Coniston Water Guide
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The Department of Justice has subpoenaed Apple, Google, Amazon and Walmart for the personal data of at least 100,000 people who downloaded or bought a car tuning app. You don't have to have done anything wrong to be on that list.

The target is EZ Lynk, a Cayman Islands company that makes the Auto Agent app and a matching dongle that plugs into a vehicle's OBD-II port. The DOJ first sued EZ Lynk back in 2021, accusing the company of manufacturing and selling defeat devices designed to strip emissions controls from diesel vehicles in violation of the Clean Air Act. EZ Lynk denies that characterisation, saying its products serve legitimate purposes including performance monitoring, software updates, and standard diagnostics.

Four years later, the case is still grinding through the courts and the government wants witnesses. Federal prosecutors issued subpoenas to Apple and Google in March and April 2026, demanding names, addresses, phone numbers and account data for everyone who downloaded the Auto Agent app. Amazon and Walmart received separate requests for the names and addresses of customers who bought the physical hardware. The total number of people caught in that net is at least 100,000, and could run considerably higher.

The DOJ's argument is that anyone who handed over personal information to EZ Lynk and clicked through its terms and conditions no longer holds "a cognizable privacy interest as to that information." In plain English: you agreed to it, so you can't complain now.

EZ Lynk's lawyers are pushing back hard. In a joint court filing earlier this month, they called the requests a serious overstep.

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Privacy advocates at the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Electronic Privacy Information Center have raised concerns that innocent users who downloaded the app purely for legitimate diagnostics could find themselves swept up in a federal investigation through no fault of their own. Apple and Google are reportedly preparing to contest the subpoenas in court.

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EZ Lynk also revealed in its court filing that this is not the first time the government has come after its customers. The company says that back in 2019, the government requested a backdoor into the EZ Lynk system itself. That request went nowhere.

There is no question that some EZ Lynk users have deployed the hardware to delete diesel particulate filters and exhaust gas recirculation systems and then reflash the engine control unit to cover the changes. Evidence of that is spread across forums and social media. But the app has a large legitimate user base too, and the DOJ's sweep does not distinguish between the two.

The case has implications that reach well beyond one tuning company. If the government can use civil litigation discovery to compel Apple and Google to unmask over 100,000 app store customers at once, the app you downloaded last week could become a federal paper trail whenever prosecutors decide they need one.

Sources

• Gizmodo — DOJ Is Asking Apple and Google to Hand Over Data on 100,000 Users of a Car App
• The Drive — DOJ Orders Apple, Google to Hand Over OBDII App User Data in Emissions Probe
• ppc.land — DOJ demands Apple, Google and Amazon unmask 100,000+ car app users
• Inc. — Amazon, Apple, and Google Subpoenaed in DOJ Case About Car Emissions
• DOJ original suit (2021) — Manhattan U.S. Attorney Sues EZ Lynk

The short answer is yes, sometimes. The longer answer depends entirely on where in the engine you are planning to put one.

If you have ever gone looking for a gasket on a discontinued model or an obscure import and come up empty, the idea of simply printing a replacement is appealing. A 3D printer, a roll of the right filament, and a CAD file of the original part sounds like it should solve the problem. In some situations, it does. In others, it will make the situation considerably worse.

The material that makes 3D printed gaskets viable for automotive use is TPU, thermoplastic polyurethane. It is a flexible elastomer that can be melted and extruded through a standard FDM printer, which natural rubber cannot. TPU is resistant to abrasion, oil and petrol exposure, and weather, and it compresses and rebounds in a way that allows it to form a genuine seal against a mating surface. It is not rubber, but it behaves like rubber in many conditions that matter.

The conditions that matter are temperature and pressure. TPU has limits on both, and those limits determine which gaskets are candidates for printing and which are not.

A valve cover gasket sits above the engine, contains oil splash at relatively low pressure, and operates in temperatures that rarely exceed 120 degrees Celsius during normal running. A water pump gasket deals with coolant at modest pressure and similar temperatures. An oil pan gasket is exposed to hot oil but again at low pressure. These are reasonable candidates. Plenty of mechanics and restorers have printed TPU replacements for exactly these applications and reported good results, particularly for older vehicles where factory gaskets are simply no longer available.

A head gasket is not a candidate. It sits between the block and the head, seals combustion gases at pressures that can exceed 100 bar during firing, and faces temperatures well above what TPU can sustain without deforming. The same logic applies to exhaust manifold gaskets, which operate in direct proximity to exhaust gas temperatures that would destroy any thermoplastic filament currently available for desktop printers. Printing either of those and expecting them to hold is optimistic to the point of being dangerous.

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There is a secondary consideration beyond the material itself, which is the surface finish that FDM printing produces. Standard FDM printers lay filament in layers, and that layered surface is inherently rougher than a moulded rubber gasket. On a lightly loaded, smooth mating surface, that roughness may not matter much. On a precision machined surface under high clamping force, the layered texture of a printed gasket can create leak paths. Industrial printers using SLS (selective laser sintering) processes produce a smoother, more consistent surface and are used commercially to produce TPU seals for pump and automotive applications, but that process is well beyond what most people have at home.

For the DIY mechanic, the practical rule is straightforward. If the original gasket was made of rubber and the application involves modest temperature, modest pressure, and oil or coolant rather than combustion gas, a TPU print is worth attempting. Print slowly, around 10 to 20 millimetres per second, use a direct drive extruder if available, and test fit before installation. If the original gasket was a multi layer steel type, graphite composite, or any kind of fire ring, do not print a replacement. Source a correct part, wait for one, or fabricate one from sheet gasket material using the old gasket as a template.

3D printing is a genuine tool for keeping old cars on the road when factory parts are gone. It is not a universal substitute for knowing what a gasket is actually doing.

Sources:

• Jalopnik — Can You 3D Print Gaskets That Actually Work?
• 3D Print Utopia — Can You Make 3D Printed Gaskets?
• Hackaday — Gaskets, Can They Be 3D Printed?
• RapidMade — Custom 3D Printed Rubber and Elastomer Parts
• PROTIQ — 3D Printed Seals

Jaguar has confirmed the name of its new electric GT. It is called the Type 01. It is also, in my opinion, deeply ugly. And that matters more than you might think.

Enzo Ferrari once stood at the Jaguar stand at the Geneva Motor Show and reportedly said of the E-Type: "Congratulations! What a truly beautiful car... it must be the most beautiful car in the world!"

The man who built Ferraris for a living said that about a British car. Let that settle for a moment.

That is the company that just confirmed its new flagship will be called the Type 01, a boxy, geometric, 5.2 metre electric slab that looks like it was designed by someone who has only ever seen other cars described in words. For the record, I was hoping the whole rebrand was a threat they would eventually walk back. It was not a threat. It is a production car. It will be built. It will go on sale. And it will carry the Jaguar badge.

The name, at least, has a logic to it. Jaguar says "Type" references its historic nomenclature, which started with the C-Type Le Mans racer in 1951 and ran through the E-Type and two generations of F-Type. The zero stands for zero emissions. The one marks the first model of a new era. Fine. The name is fine. The car behind the name is another matter entirely.

Now, I want to be fair here. Jaguar has wobbled before. The Ford years gave us the X-Type, which TIME Magazine included in its list of the 50 worst cars of all time, describing it as the English version of the Cadillac Cimarron, a tarted up insult to a marque that once stood for something. The S-Type was widely considered one of the least attractive cars Jaguar ever produced, wearing a pastiche retro face that embarrassed itself next to the genuine article. The XJ40 had an identity crisis that took years to recover from. These were stumbles, but they were stumbles within the bounds of the Jaguar design language. You could still see what they were trying to be.

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The Type 01 is not a stumble. It is a full departure. The "Copy Nothing" campaign that launched this era told us to forget what came before. Jaguar boss Rawdon Glover said the car "looks and drives like no other electric car, yet reflects a unique provenance." The provenance he is referring to built the E-Type. The car he is describing looks nothing like it was made by the same civilisation.

Yes, the numbers are impressive. three motors producing more than 1,000 horsepower, 958 lb ft of torque, a 120 kWh battery with 850V architecture and a 350 kW charge rate, over 400 miles of claimed range. It will be enormous, expensive somewhere between £100,000 and £150,000 and, by early test drive accounts from journalists who have ridden in prototypes, genuinely quick and capable. None of that is the point.

The point is that beauty matters at Jaguar. It has always mattered at Jaguar. The E-Type was designed not by a traditional car designer but by an aerospace engineer named Malcolm Sayer, who applied aircraft aerodynamic principles to a road car and produced something so correct that the Museum of Modern Art in New York put one in its permanent collection. It was so clearly and undeniably beautiful that Enzo Ferrari, whose ego operated on a geological timescale, apparently felt compelled to say so out loud.

Jaguar has decided that car, that legacy, that standing, is something to be left behind in pursuit of a buyer who wants a bold, provocative, futuristic luxury EV with no rear window and the general proportions of a modernist airport terminal. Maybe those buyers exist. Maybe the car drives brilliantly. Maybe in ten years the Type 01 aesthetic looks prescient and everyone arguing today looks like they were wrong.

But right now, looking at what this company used to make, and looking at what it is about to sell, I can tell you that Enzo Ferrari would not be stopping at this stand in Geneva.

The company that makes diggers is back on the salt flats. This time it is burning hydrogen.

Twenty years ago, a Staffordshire construction equipment manufacturer did something nobody expected. JCB built a land speed car, took it to the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, and set a diesel land speed record of 350.092mph that has never been beaten. The driver was RAF Wing Commander Andy Green, the only person in history to break the sound barrier on land, having piloted the jet powered Thrust SSC to 763.035mph in 1997. Now JCB is going back, Green is going back, and this time the fuel is hydrogen.

The car is called the Hydromax. It is 32 feet long and was built over five years at a cost of £100 million, developed with Prodrive, the Oxfordshire engineering firm behind some of the most capable rally and motorsport machinery on earth. Two hydrogen combustion engines sit at its core, each producing around 800hp in record trim, combining for a total output of 1,579bhp. Those engines are mechanically close to units that now power production JCB diggers, with chief engineer Lee Harper telling Autocar the internals are "very similar." The same engines produce around 80bhp each in standard form. Getting from 80 to 800 is a matter of getting fuel and air to mix properly at extreme pressure, according to Harper, and the Hydromax achieves that with bespoke intercoolers, radiators and racing specification turbochargers.

Power goes to all four wheels through a twin transmission and clutch system. The body has been refined for aerodynamic stability at speeds the previous car was not designed to exceed. Every suspension component, traction control setting and camera placement has been stress and simulation tested before a wheel turns on salt.

The record the Hydromax is primarily chasing is its own predecessor's. Lord Bamford, JCB's chairman, has stated the aim plainly: beat 350mph. Beyond that sits the existing hydrogen land speed record of 302.877mph, set by the Buckeye Bullet 2 fuel cell vehicle in 2009, and the hydrogen combustion record of 185.5mph set by BMW's H2R prototype in 2004. The Hydromax is not competing in the fuel cell category. It burns hydrogen in a combustion chamber, which is a different and more directly relevant technology for the construction industry JCB serves.

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UK testing begins next month. The team then heads to Bonneville Speedweek, running from 1 to 7 August, where competitors from around the world gather to chase records on the salt. Official FIA record runs will follow immediately after. The available track at Bonneville is now nine miles long, two miles shorter than in 2006. JCB says the Hydromax's superior power to weight ratio over the Dieselmax will compensate.

Green, who will be 64 when the car makes its attempt, said:

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Lord Bamford put the broader point this way:

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JCB has been running hydrogen diggers on commercial construction sites since 2025, making it the first company to deploy hydrogen combustion machinery outside a test environment anywhere in the world. The Hydromax is not separate from that programme. It is the sharp end of it.

A digger maker going 350mph on a salt flat to prove a point about heavy equipment emissions is, objectively, one of the better things happening in the automotive world right now.

Sources:

• Autocar — JCB targets new speed record with 32 foot-long, 1579bhp Hydromax
• JCB official — Introducing the JCB Hydromax
• Auto Express — Insane JCB Hydromax targets 350mph
• Top Gear — JCB is back with the Hydromax: can it hit 400mph?

The electric Golf you've been waiting for just got pushed back to 2030, crushing hopes of an EV hot hatch revival.

Volkswagen has delivered a crushing blow to hot hatch enthusiasts worldwide, with CEO confirmation that the long-awaited electric Golf won't arrive until the end of this decade. The announcement represents a massive shift in strategy for a company that once dominated the affordable performance segment.

The delay puts Volkswagen years behind competitors who are already delivering electric performance cars. While rivals race ahead with compelling EV offerings, Golf fans must now wait until 2030 for their beloved nameplate to join the electric revolution. The current Golf lineup remains stuck with conventional engines and hybrid variants, looking increasingly dated against the backdrop of rapid industry electrification.

Volkswagen's CEO stated the company is "set" with its current portfolio, a comment that will sting for anyone hoping the German giant would prioritize one of its most iconic models. The Golf has been a cornerstone of VW's lineup for decades, spawning legendary variants like the GTI and R that defined entire generations of driving enthusiasts. Now those same fans face an agonizing wait while the brand focuses elsewhere.

The decision exposes fundamental tensions within Volkswagen's electric strategy. The company has poured resources into the ID series, built on the dedicated MEB platform, while traditional models like the Golf remain tethered to older architectures. This split approach has created an awkward situation where VW's most beloved nameplate gets sidelined in favor of newer, less emotionally resonant brands.

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Industry insiders suggest the delay stems from VW's reluctance to cannibalize ID.3 sales with a more desirable electric Golf. The ID.3 has struggled to capture hearts and minds the way the Golf once did, lacking the emotional connection that made its predecessor a cultural phenomenon. By keeping the Golf electric at bay, Volkswagen protects its newer model from inevitable comparisons it might lose.

The timing couldn't be worse for VW's reputation. Mini is preparing major facelifts for its electric Cooper range, while BYD prepares European-specific models that could fill the affordable EV performance gap Volkswagen is leaving wide open. These brands recognize what VW seems to have forgotten: enthusiasts want familiar names attached to cutting-edge technology, not wholesale replacement with sterile alternatives.

Financial markets have noticed too. Volkswagen's stock has underperformed compared to rivals who've successfully electrified their most popular models without abandoning beloved nameplates. BMW kept the 3 Series, Mercedes preserved the C-Class, yet Volkswagen chose to effectively retire one of Europe's most successful car names from the electric future.

For thousands of potential customers already planning their next vehicle purchase, this delay forces an uncomfortable choice. They can either wait six years for an electric Golf that may never live up to expectations, or defect to brands that take their loyalty more seriously. Many won't wait.

Sources: Based on industry reports and Volkswagen corporate communications. Specific CEO statements referenced from automotive industry publications covering VW's EV strategy announcements.

California hits General Motors with the largest automotive data privacy fine in state history after the company sold 1.5 million customers' real-time driving behavior to data brokers without consent.

Your Chevrolet Silverado has been snitching on you. Every time you accelerated too hard pulling out of a parking lot, every late night drive, every quick stop at the gas station. General Motors collected it all and sold the data to third party brokers for seven years without asking permission.

California's Department of Motor Vehicles announced this week that GM will pay a record setting $12.75 million penalty for violating state privacy laws by selling detailed driving behavior data from over 1.5 million vehicle owners between 2015 and 2022. The fine represents the largest automotive data privacy penalty in California history.

The data GM sold wasn't just basic information. The company transmitted real time location data, speed readings, acceleration patterns, and braking behavior to data brokers including LexisNexis and Verisk Analytics. These companies then packaged and resold the information to insurance companies, law enforcement agencies, and other buyers willing to pay for intimate details about how people drive.

California DMV Director Steve Gordon said the settlement "sends a clear message that we will hold automakers accountable for protecting consumer privacy." The violation centered on GM's failure to obtain explicit customer consent before selling their data, as required under the California Consumer Privacy Act.

GM drivers had no idea their vehicles were broadcasting their every move. The data collection happened automatically through OnStar and other connected vehicle services that customers thought were there for roadside assistance and navigation help. Instead, these systems functioned as sophisticated surveillance networks feeding information to corporate buyers.

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The scope of surveillance extended far beyond what most car buyers could imagine. GM tracked not just where people drove, but how they drove. Hard braking events, rapid acceleration, speed over posted limits, and time spent driving were all recorded and monetized. Insurance companies used this data to adjust premiums and coverage decisions without customers knowing their own cars provided the evidence.

LexisNexis, one of the primary data buyers, operates what it calls a "telematics exchange" where driving behavior scores are calculated and sold to insurance companies. Verisk Analytics runs similar operations, turning real world driving into risk assessment products. Both companies profited from GM's data harvesting while drivers remained unaware their privacy was being sold.

A GM spokesperson said the company "is committed to protecting our customers' privacy and has already made changes to our data practices." The automaker ended its partnerships with data brokers in March 2024, months before the California settlement was announced. However, the company provided no details about what data might still be collected or how it could be used internally.

The settlement requires GM to implement new consent mechanisms and data protection measures for California customers. The company must now explicitly ask permission before sharing driving data and provide clear explanations about how the information will be used. Customers must also be given options to opt out of data collection entirely.

Other automakers likely face similar scrutiny as regulators examine how connected vehicles harvest and monetize customer data. Modern cars collect vastly more information than most owners realize, from cabin conversations picked up by voice activation systems to detailed maps of daily travel patterns. The GM settlement establishes that selling this data without clear consent violates state privacy laws.

The $12.75 million penalty represents roughly what GM might earn from data sales in a few months, raising questions about whether the fine creates sufficient deterrent effect. For a company with annual revenues exceeding $170 billion, the settlement may feel more like a cost of doing business than a punishment for betraying customer trust.

Sources: California Department of Motor Vehicles settlement announcement; GM corporate statement; California Consumer Privacy Act compliance requirements

Kevin Pringle spent years watching drivers mount his grass verge, leave muddy trenches, and drive away. Aged 64, the former prison officer bought a knackered Hyundai Getz to test his solution. It works. He has a patent. Milton Keynes council has a problem with it. He does not particularly care.

Kevin Pringle's front garden in Milton Keynes is four feet wide. It is, or was, lawn. For years he watched drivers treat it as an extension of the road, mounting the verge to park, cut a corner, or simply because they were not paying attention. He relaid the grass repeatedly. The cars came back. He called it "muddy trenches." He decided something had to be done.

What he came up with looks, from the street, like an ordinary garden fence. Low, wooden, unremarkable. The kind of thing you walk past without registering. But hidden inside the fence posts are small metal spikes on a mechanism activated by pressure. When a vehicle rolls over the fence, the spikes engage and penetrate the tyre. Not instantly. Slowly. Enough to deflate it over time in the way a police stinger operates, without the catastrophic blowout that would cause a crash.

He called it the Smart Fence. He patented it. He bought a Hyundai Getz on its last legs specifically to test whether it worked.

It worked.

The legal question he went and asked first

Pringle is a former prison officer. He thought about liability before he started drilling. He consulted legal advisors about whether a homeowner who installs a fence designed to deflate tyres could be held responsible for damage to a vehicle that hits it.

The answer he came back with was framed around the logic of criminal damage. His garden is his property. Driving onto it and tearing up the ground is criminal damage. If you are committing criminal damage and you damage your vehicle in the process, that is on you.

He put it this way: "If I try and jimmy your backdoor with a screwdriver and it breaks, you don't have to pay me for damages. Tearing up a garden is criminal damage. If you're committing criminal damage and you damage your tools such as a car, it is your responsibility."

It is a reasonable argument. Whether a court would agree is untested, which is also a reasonable summary of where this technology currently sits.

What Milton Keynes council thinks

The local highways authority was asked for a comment. Its view: "Under the law, items can't be placed on public highway land without the proper authorisation. Items may only be placed on the highway with the proper licence."

That is the council noting, correctly, that if the fence sits on or overhangs the public highway rather than on private property, a licence is required. Whether Pringle's fence sits entirely on his own land or encroaches on the highway is the specific question the council's statement does not answer directly.

Pringle's front garden measuring four feet sits between his house and the road. The precise position of the boundary between his private land and the public highway is the kind of question that occupies planning solicitors and boundary disputes for years. Whether his fence sits on the right side of that line is a matter he appears confident about.

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Where he thinks it goes next

Pringle is not building this just for his own garden. He sees commercial applications: councils using the fence to prevent vehicles accessing grassland that has planning protection, schools protecting their grounds, estates and hotel grounds keeping drivers off verges. He specifically mentioned its potential use in preventing unauthorised encampments on council grassland, which is a recurring problem that councils currently address through bollards, bunds and legal injunctions, all of which are slower and more expensive than a fence that deflates your tyres before you have got fully onto the grass.

The product is at prototype stage. He has his patent. The next step is manufacturing and distribution at a price point that makes it attractive: £40 for half a metre is comparable to quality garden fencing without the hidden engineering.

The deeper issue underneath the garden

Grass verge parking costs the UK an estimated £50 million a year in repairs, according to the RAC Foundation, which has been pressing for clearer enforcement powers for local authorities on verge protection. Councils in England generally lack the power to issue fines for verge parking unless the road is specifically designated, and police do not prioritise it. The result is that the cost of repairing damaged verges falls on councils, and through them on taxpayers, while the drivers who caused the damage carry no consequences.

What Kevin Pringle built in his front garden in Milton Keynes is a private enforcement mechanism for a problem that public enforcement has consistently failed to address. The spikes do not issue a fine. They do not take a photograph. They do not require a warden to be present. They just slowly let the air out of the tyre of the vehicle that drove over the man's grass.

Whether it is strictly legal depends on exactly where his boundary is. Whether it is satisfying depends on how many times you have relaid your own lawn.

We cover enforcement and accountability stories at GaukMotorBuzz.com/drivers-revenge.

Sources:

• Surrey Live / North Wales Live — Retiree sick of cars driving over his lawn invents stinger fence with hidden spikes
• The Mirror — Retiree sick of cars ruining his lawn invents fence that can puncture tyres
• RAC Foundation — Parking on verges

The Jetour G700 Ark Edition does not merely float. It drives on water using electrically powered propellers.

Two years ago, BYD's YangWang division broke the internet when it demonstrated its U8 SUV floating in a controlled pool, spinning slowly on the spot using nothing but wheel torque. Impressive, sure. But the U8 was essentially a very expensive rubber duck. It could stay afloat for 30 minutes and crawl along at 3 km/h. That was the ceiling.

Chery's Jetour brand has now crossed that ceiling and kept going. Literally.

Last week, the Jetour G700 Ark Edition completed a public crossing of Yanqi Lake north of Beijing. Not floating. Not drifting. Sailing, under power, using a dedicated propeller system that activates the moment the wheels leave the ground.

The Ark Edition runs the same core hardware as the standard G700: a 2.0 litre turbocharged four cylinder working alongside twin electric motors for a combined 892 hp and 837 lb ft of torque on land. That powertrain delivers a 0 to 100 km/h time of 4.6 seconds and a total range of up to 1,400 km on a full tank and a full charge from the 31.4 kWh CATL battery pack. Three locking differentials come standard. It is, in short, a Land Cruiser 300 Series competitor that has decided the road is only a starting point.

On water, the system works differently. The engine and motors stop driving the wheels entirely and redirect power to the propellers. A gyroscopic stabilisation system with six axes keeps the body level. The hull is IP68 sealed, the engine has additional water intrusion protection, and an active air circulation system runs throughout. Jetour describes the capability as an emergency feature, designed for flash flood situations and extreme terrain crossings rather than recreational lake tours.

That said, it crossed the Yangtze River in October 2025 before anyone was watching. Yanqi Lake was just the repeat performance.

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The G700 is sized alongside the Toyota Land Cruiser 300 and is confirmed for global export markets. Chinese market pricing sits between 329,900 and 424,900 yuan, which is roughly USD 45,000 to USD 58,500 at current exchange rates. The amphibious Ark Edition sits at the top of that range, and its availability outside China has not been confirmed.

What Chery has confirmed, through footage and a public lake crossing, is something nobody else has managed: a production SUV that transitions from road to open water under active propulsion. BYD floated a vehicle. Jetour sailed one.

The gap between those two sentences is about two years and a very long swim.

Sources:

• Carscoops: https://www.carscoops.com/2026/05/jetour-g700-amphibious-suv/
• InsideEVs: https://insideevs.com/news/794790/china-phev-suv-amphibious-chery-jetour-g700/
• Carsales.com.au: https://www.carsales.com.au/editorial/details/jetour-g700-ark-edition-the-swimming-suv-151919/
• Autoblog: https://www.autoblog.com/news/this-chinese-suv-can-swim-in-deep-water-and-it-has-an-892-hp-engine
• CarNewsChina (YangWang U8 launch): https://carnewschina.com/2023/09/20/byds-yangwang-u8-launched-can-float-on-water-for-30-minutes-and-sail-3km-h/
• Carscoops (YangWang U8): https://www.carscoops.com/2023/09/byds-yangwang-u8-floats-and-wades-through-water-at-speeds-of-1-8-mph-by-turning-its-wheels/

Factual note: Battery capacity figures conflict across sources. Carscoops, Autoblog and the brief cite 31.4 kWh; InsideEVs reports 34.1 kWh. The 31.4 kWh figure appears in the majority of sources and has been used here. The USD price conversion is approximate and based on current exchange rates at time of writing.

Welcome To The Wild West, Where Texas Loses Nearly A Billion Dollars Of Oil A Year To Thieves

Crude oil is vanishing from the Permian Basin at industrial scale. Thieves are operating in broad daylight, and law enforcement cannot keep up.

The Permian Basin sits in the flat, sunbaked west of Texas and stretches into New Mexico. It is the most productive oil patch on earth, pumping more crude than most OPEC members. It is also, increasingly, a crime scene.

Martin County Sheriff Randy Cozart told Bloomberg Businessweek that his office gets at least one call a week from an operator whose field has been robbed. By his estimate, around 500 barrels go missing from Martin County alone every single week. At last year's average oil price of $65 a barrel, that is $1.7 million in annual losses from one county in a region that spans dozens. Scale that across the basin and the numbers climb fast. The Texas Independent Producers and Royalty Owners Association has reported that one of its larger members alone lost $1.1 million in crude and equipment between 2023 and 2024.

The theft is not opportunistic. It is organised, professional and brazen.

According to Bloomberg's investigation, today's Permian thieves hook vacuum trucks directly into storage tank lines and siphon crude in broad daylight, timing their hits to coincide with the field's busiest hours so the operation blends in. Some swap or cover their licence plates to avoid identification. The most sophisticated operators pose as waste haulers, companies that legitimate operators pay to remove toxic water from storage tanks. They pull up, run the same lines, take the oil and drive away. It looks like a regular shift. The theft often goes undetected until someone checks the inventory.

The remoteness that makes the Permian Basin so productive is exactly what makes it so vulnerable. Oil wells outnumber people across most of this terrain, and law enforcement is stretched thin. The Winkler County Sheriff told the Texas Tribune his ten deputies cover 841 square miles. He does not have the manpower or the budget to post someone at an oil field full time.

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The FBI recognised the scale of the problem back in 2008 and stood up a task force to address equipment theft across the basin. In recent years that task force pivoted to focus specifically on crude oil. According to FBI data, reported crude theft actually dipped in 2025, a trend the bureau partly attributed to lower barrel prices. But the bureau also acknowledged its data relies heavily on voluntary reporting from operators, which means the true scale is almost certainly larger than the numbers suggest.

Texas responded legislatively last summer. Governor Greg Abbott signed three bills in Midland directing the Department of Public Safety and the Railroad Commission of Texas to stand up their own petroleum theft task forces, at a cost to taxpayers of nearly $5 million. The Railroad Commission, which is the state's oil and gas regulator despite the name suggesting otherwise, is conducting its own study with findings due in December.

At the federal level, Representative Tony Gonzales reintroduced the Protect the Permian Act in 2026, targeting the criminal networks behind the thefts rather than just the individuals at the end of the supply chain. Gonzales has described the situation as a national security issue: West Texas produces roughly 15% of the world's energy resources, and the stolen crude is being laundered into local supply chains or driven across the border into Mexico.

Michael Lozano of the Permian Basin Petroleum Association put it plainly to Bloomberg: "The old joke in the oil field used to be that if it wasn't bolted down, it would get stolen."

The joke stopped being funny a billion dollars ago.

Sources:

• Bloomberg Businessweek — Oil Theft Is Burning a Billion-Dollar Hole in the West Texas Economy
• The Texas Tribune — Texas creating task forces to target Permian Basin oil field thefts
• Permian Basin Petroleum Association
• NewsNation — Crude oil theft costs Texas billions as prices rise
• Jalopnik — Welcome To The Wild West, Where Texas Loses Nearly A Billion Dollars Of Oil A Year To Thieves

A generation of mechanics learned their trade with instruments that would mystify today's technicians.

Walk into any modern auto shop and you'll find diagnostic computers worth more than entire tool collections from decades past. But buried in the back corners of old garages, wrapped in oil-stained cloth and gathering dust, lie the instruments that once defined automotive mastery. These aren't just tools. They're archaeological evidence of an era when fixing cars required intimate knowledge of mechanical systems that no longer exist.

The carburetor synchronization tool might be the most foreign concept to contemporary mechanics. Before fuel injection conquered the automotive world, performance engines often ran multiple carburettors that had to work in perfect harmony. Motorcycle mechanics and sports car specialists wielded these devices like tuning forks, using mercury columns or vacuum gauges to ensure each carburetor delivered precisely the same fuel mixture. The tool itself resembled a medical instrument more than automotive equipment, with delicate glass tubes and rubber hoses connecting to individual carburetor throats.

Even more specialized were float level gauges, precision instruments that measured carburetor float height to within thousandths of an inch. Set the float too high and the engine would flood. Too low and it would starve for fuel. The gauge required removing the carburetor top and carefully positioning a graduated rod against the float mechanism. Modern mechanics dealing with electronic fuel injection have never encountered anything remotely similar.

Ignition timing in the points and condenser era demanded its own arsenal of now obsolete tools. The dwell meter measured the electrical angle during which ignition points remained closed, typically reading 28 to 32 degrees for V8 engines. Point gap feeler gauges, razor thin metal strips usually set to 0.016 inches for most American cars, determined the physical separation between contact points. Get either measurement wrong and the engine would misfire, backfire, or refuse to start entirely.

The timing light with advance capability represents perhaps the most sophisticated of these vanished instruments. Unlike basic strobe timing lights, these units could display not just initial timing but the complete advance curve as engine RPM increased. Mechanics could verify that centrifugal weights and vacuum diaphragms were functioning correctly, adjustments that modern computer controlled ignition systems handle automatically.

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Before 12 volt electrical systems became standard in the late 1950s, mechanics carried 6 volt test lights and specialized equipment for the lower voltage systems. Battery maintenance involved hydrometers, glass tubes with weighted floats that tested the specific gravity of battery acid to determine charge levels. These instruments required handling corrosive electrolyte that could blind or burn, a far cry from today's sealed maintenance free batteries.

Valve adjustment demanded its own category of tools when solid lifter engines ruled the roads. Mechanics used feeler gauges and specialized wrenches to set valve lash, typically to specifications like 0.012 inches intake and 0.018 inches exhaust for small block Chevrolet engines. Miss these adjustments and valves would burn or the engine would develop a distinctive ticking noise that marked sloppy workmanship.

Cooling system diagnosis required radiator pressure testers, hand pump devices that could pressurize the entire cooling system to locate leaks. Antifreeze protection levels were measured with hydrometers calibrated to show freeze protection temperatures. Thermostat testing involved specialized containers with built in thermometers where mechanics could verify that thermostats opened at their rated temperatures, usually 160 to 195 degrees Fahrenheit depending on the application.

The brake system tools of yesteryear would seem particularly archaic to modern technicians accustomed to disc brakes and ABS systems. Brake shoe arc grinders contoured replacement linings to match drum curvature exactly. Wheel cylinder hones, essentially flexible shaft mounted stones, restored cylinder bore surfaces that had developed ridges from corrosion or wear. Brake drum micrometers measured internal drum diameter to determine if drums could be safely turned on a lathe or needed replacement.

These tools didn't disappear because they were inadequate. They vanished because the automotive systems they served evolved beyond recognition. Fuel injection eliminated carburettors. Electronic ignition made points and condensers obsolete. Hydraulic valve lifters ended the need for valve adjustments. Sealed cooling systems reduced maintenance requirements.

Yet something was lost in this technological progression. The old tools demanded understanding of underlying mechanical principles. A mechanic who could properly synchronize multiple carburettors understood fuel metering in ways that scanning trouble codes cannot teach. The intimate knowledge required to set ignition timing by ear and feel created craftsmen who could diagnose problems that sophisticated computers might miss.

Today's automotive technicians are undoubtedly more efficient and their diagnostic capabilities far exceed what any timing light or dwell meter could provide. But those oil stained tool rolls gathering dust in forgotten corners of old garages tell the story of an era when fixing cars was as much art as science, and when mechanical sympathy meant the difference between a running engine and an expensive pile of metal.

Research sources: Classic automotive repair manuals, vintage tool catalogs, and technical documentation from the Society of Automotive Engineers archives.

The Fenomeno Roadster was revealed at the second Lamborghini Arena event in Imola on May 9 2026. It produces 1,080 CV from a 6.5 litre V12 and three electric motors, hits 100 km/h in 2.4 seconds, runs to over 340 km/h, costs well in excess of €3 million, and exists in a production run of 15 cars. All 15 were sold before anyone outside the company had seen it.

Every few years, Lamborghini does something to remind the rest of the supercar world that it is operating by different rules entirely. The Veneno. The Centenario. The Sian. Cars that arrive already spoken for, that exist in numbers smaller than most people's contact lists, that combine engineering that is genuinely at the edge of what is possible with design that looks like it was conceived by someone who had never seen the word "restrained" written down.

The Fenomeno Roadster is the latest entry in that lineage, and it is the most powerful one yet.

Lamborghini calls these models its "Few Off" programme. The tradition started with the Reventón in 2007, extended to an open top Reventón Roadster in 2009, and has since produced open versions of the Veneno, Centenario and Sian. Each one arrived in numbers small enough to be sold out before the public reveal. The Fenomeno Roadster caps production at 15 examples, making it less than half as numerous as the Fenomeno Coupe unveiled at Monterey Car Week in 2025, which was limited to 29 units.

The powertrain

The engine is a 6.5 litre naturally aspirated V12, which produces 835 CV at 9,250 rpm and 725 Nm of torque at 6,750 rpm on its own. Three electric motors supplement it: two sitting on the front axle providing torque vectoring and regenerative braking, and a third positioned above the eight speed twin clutch gearbox. Combined system output is 1,080 CV. The specific output of the V12 alone exceeds 128 CV per litre, a record for any Lamborghini V12 programme.

Performance figures are: 0 to 100 km/h in 2.4 seconds. 0 to 200 km/h in 6.8 seconds. Top speed above 340 km/h, which is 211 miles per hour.

The 7 kWh lithium ion battery also enables a fully electric driving mode, though Lamborghini is wisely quiet about how far that takes you. The standard Revuelto, which underpins the Fenomeno, is rated by the EPA for approximately eight kilometres of emissions free driving. Pure electric range is not why you buy this car.

What makes it a Roadster and not just a Coupe with the roof cut off

Removing the roof from any performance car creates aerodynamic problems that need to be solved, not ignored. The Fenomeno Coupe uses a air scoop mounted on the roof to feed cooling air to the V12 at high speed. Without a roof, that scoop disappears. Lamborghini redesigned the entire upper aerodynamic package.

A carbon spoiler integrated into the windshield header now channels air over the open cockpit and directly into a redesigned engine bay, replacing the Coupe's air scoop. The rear clamshell was reshaped. The active rear wing was reprofiled for the open configuration. A revised diffuser was added. According to Lamborghini, the Roadster matches the Coupe for downforce, stability and brake cooling despite the open structure.

The rollover protection required by safety regulations sits behind the seats, integrated into what Lamborghini calls Speedster humps. These are not decorative. The structures are structural, aerodynamically shaped to reduce turbulence at high speed, and cover the rollover arches without the aesthetic compromise that solutions in less considered cars produce.

The monocoque is a carbon fibre monofuselage, the same inspired by aerospace structure used in the Revuelto. The front structure uses Lamborghini's Forged Composite, integrating crash structures, windshield frame, rear bulkhead and side sills into a single bonded carbon assembly. Adding the open top structure required only a few kilograms of additional weight over the Coupe. Lamborghini attributes this to a patented combination of long and short carbon fibres bonded with a fluid mixture, used here for the first time in a hybrid configuration on any production Lamborghini.

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The design

The reveal car wears Blu Cepheus over Rosso Mars, chosen as a tribute to the city of Bologna and a visual reference to the 1968 Miura Roadster. The hexagonal motif that runs through Lamborghini's current design language appears everywhere: in the side skirts, wheel arches, air intakes, LED light signatures and the tall hexagonal exhaust outlet at the rear.

The side windows drop low in the middle, a shape that Autoblog compared to the Veneno Roadster. The effect is part fighter jet, part architecture firm's concept sketch. Design director Mitja Borkert described the objective as placing the powertrain at the centre of visual attention, with the driver placed inside rather than on top of the car.

Tyres are Bridgestone Potenza Sport, developed specifically for this model in 265/30 ZRF21 at the front and 355/25 ZRF22 at the rear. A semi slick next generation Potenza on smaller wheels is available as the track alternative, homologated for public roads.

The interior is built around carbon fibre, Corsatex fabric based on Dinamica, and Lamborghini's patented Carbon Skin material. Three digital displays with hexagonal graphics combine with haptic controls and aviation style switches in what Lamborghini calls its Pilot Interaction layout.

Price and availability

Lamborghini has not disclosed a price. The Fenomeno Coupe started at approximately €3.5 million. Independent estimates from HotHardware and GTSpirit place the Roadster in a range of €3 million to more than €5 million per car. All 15 examples are understood to have been sold ahead of the public reveal. If you have not already been offered one, you were not on the list.

CEO Stephan Winkelmann described the car in the terms Lamborghini reserves for occasions like this: "Fenomeno Roadster represents the purest expression of our brand values: visionary design, uncompromising performance, and absolute exclusivity. Each example is conceived as a collectible masterpiece, where engineering excellence meets true bespoke craftsmanship."

That sentence has been said before, about the Veneno and the Centenario and the Sian. It will be said again about whatever comes after the Fenomeno Roadster. It keeps being true.

Sources:

• Lamborghini official press release — Fenomeno Roadster: Lamborghini's most powerful open-top
• Motor1 — Lamborghini Fenomeno Roadster Revealed: Details, Specs, Photos
• Autoblog — Lamborghini Fenomeno Roadster Revealed with 1,065-HP V12 and Weird Side Windows
• GTSpirit — Lamborghini Fenomeno Roadster: Wilder Than Ever
• The EV Report — Lamborghini Fenomeno Roadster: 1,080 CV V12 Hybrid Limited to 15 Units
• DriveSpark — Lamborghini Fenomeno Roadster: 1,065bhp Hybrid V12, 15 Units Only