A biweekly roundup of automotive news, good, bad and just plain weird:
Can a pair of glasses cure car sickness?
There’s little that’s worse than getting motion sick in a car. Happily, it’s not something I’ve ever personally struggled with, but a few family members are susceptible, and it can quickly turn a road trip sour.
Good news then, as Citroën has come up with a solution. Based on work done by a French company called Boarding Ring, intended for use at sea, Citroën’s design is called Seetroën glasses.
The glasses are worn as normal, and contain coloured fluid in the rims. Imagine the thick-framed glasses worn by Harry Potter crossed with a silly straw crossed with a level, and there you go.
As the fluid self-levels in turns, it works a bit like the horizon indicator in an aircraft. Apparently, having the reminder in the periphery of your sight helps the brain better process the signals you’re getting from your inner ear. Even if you’re already sick, the feeling should pass soon after you put the glasses on.
As the design looks simple and cheap to manufacture, this could be more than just some publicity stunt for a car company. Currently, the cost is about $100, but mass production could bring that down, making road trips enjoyable again for the whole family.
Porsche working on coupe-styled Cayenne
For some reason, car companies are under the impression that we’d all rather have slightly-less-practical crossovers. Witness the BMW X6 and the Mercedes-Benz GLE, which exchange useful space for what’s claimed to be a styling improvement. Which it’s not.
Porsche is now seeking to jump on the bandwagon, as spy shots are emerging of a Porsche Cayenne coupe. Oh dear. Oh dearie me indeed. I wonder if Citroën can make glasses to damp this nausea.
Travis Pastrana pays tribute to Knievel
Jumping over things with a car or motorcycle is a time-honoured tradition, but not as time-honoured as the tradition of hurting yourself badly while trying to do so. Consider the legendary Evel Knievel’s attempt at jumping over the fountains at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas: he crashed, shattering his pelvis, hip, femur, wrist, and both ankles.
Still, people were impressed with the daring, if not the execution. And, also, perhaps they were impressed that Evel lived.
To pay homage to Knievel’s 1967 jump, modern daredevil Travis Pastrana set out to break three record setting jumps. Seated on an Indian Scout FTR750 – about twice as heavy as the motorcross bikes normally used today – Pastrana first aimed to jump 52 cars, then 16 Greyhound buses, and finally, to clear the fountains.
Thanks in part to modern discoveries like physics, Pastrana did indeed manage to pull off all three jumps successfully, soaring over the iconic fountains like Evel himself, but just landing without losing his spleen.
Meet the world’s fastest lawnmower
The Goodwood Festival of Speed should be on any gearhead’s bucket list. A blend of racing, historical celebration, and generally showing off, it is a magnificent spectacle to behold. Where else will you see Formula 1 cars, Le Mans winning prototypes, sideways drift machines, and maybe a Dakar Rally truck or two – all in a single afternoon?
Also, what kind of ride-on lawnmower do you think the Goodwood manor groundskeeper uses?
That’s still a question to be answered. However, he could hardly go wrong with something like the Honda Mean Mower. Equipped with a 189 h.p. engine out of a Fireblade motorcycle, the Mean Mower is a sort of cross between a real-life Super Mario Kart and a gardening implement.
Yes, you can really cut a lawn with this thing. It has working carbon-fibre blades and a real cutting deck. However, that superbike engine might make roostertails of your grass, so perhaps not.
V-8 Cygnet is one angry ugly duckling
One more Goodwood tale before we go. You may perhaps not be familiar with the Aston Martin Cygnet, one of the most cynical (or maybe just cheeky) vehicles ever made. A rebadged version of the economy-minded Scion iQ – picture a Smart car – the Cygnet was intended to bring down Aston’s average emissions figures. More than a few people bought them and used them as city cars, but they weren’t exactly a performance icon.
However, at a request from a customer with deep pockets, Aston Martin’s special Q division has just made sure the Cygnet can fly. They’ve shoehorned in a whacking great 4.7-litre V-8 engine out of the old Vantage S, widened the wheel arches to deal with the extra power, and grafted in much of the Vantage’s suspension and braking set up.
The result is what looks like a highly annoyed lentil, and goes like a scalded cat. Where the iQ took about 11.5 seconds to get to 100 kilometres per hour, the V-8 Cygnet does the deed in a little more than four seconds, and will go on to a projected top speed of 275 km/h.
In the fable, the ugly duckling grows up and turns out to be a beautiful, elegant swan. In this version, it starts chain-smoking unfiltered cigarettes and head-butting people right in the face.
Watch this space for all the week’s best and worst of automotive news, or submit your own auto oddities to [email protected].
