It’s that time of year again, no really it is, honest! Countless people all over the world love a good April Fools’ prank – and it turns out a lot of those people work at automotive companies. As a result, it’s become a time-honoured tradition for some of the world’s biggest car manufacturers to roll out their most creative ideas for fooling their customers. Of course, sometimes they don’t quite go according to plan, as in the case of the Voltswagen saga a couple of years ago.
The Audi b-tron
In 2019, Audi supposedly debuted a new twist on its popular electric vehicle, the Audi e-tron. This new model had a decidedly more apian theme though – the good folks at Audi proudly called it the b-tron. It’s the brainchild of lead engineer Imker Honig, and constructed in a department of Audi called Komplett Geschminkt. (In case your German’s a little rusty; those translate to “Beekeeper Honey” and “Completely Made Up”, respectively.)
The b-tron is made with (suspiciously vague) hex technology, represented by its hexagonal fuel cap. It’s also fitted with an in-built toaster, so you can enjoy breakfast on your way to work. The fictional Herr Honig / Mister Honey said that this caused problems during testing though:
“Early prototypes tended to attract scores of bees, typically around the hexagonal fuel cap. One tester was swarmed by a hive that had settled in the glove compartment.”
Strange thing to admit publicly about your new car, isn’t it? You’d almost think they weren’t worried about not selling any.
The Mini Cooper T
There’s no question that this idea from Mini caused a bit of a stir. The Mini Cooper T was a vehicle that the company said would run on tea only. Apparently quite efficiently too – allegedly up to 40 miles on one cup.
In the words of Head of Cooper T engineering, Dr. Ivana Kuppa: “This particular project has been brewing for years. Our extensive research has shown that the nation’s favourite drink is also an ideal biofuel. We already know good things come in small packages, but with Cooper T customers benefitting from up to 40 miles per cup, we are delighted to have the opportunity to bring this car to market.”
As an extra bonus, this made-up Mini was also said to come with patented Dunk Avoidance Technology, to prevent cheeky passers-by from opening the fuel tank and diving in with a digestive. It might sound like quite a whimsical kind of wrongdoing but - let’s be honest - there are few crimes more serious than the theft of another person’s proper tea.
MG’s invisible car
Did you happen to see this cool innovation from MG in 2016? No, neither did we. Designed by Professor C. Thrue and Chief Designer Avril F'ouil, the prestigious British brand was keen to get heads turning towards its invisible car (arguably quite the task in itself). It’s a concept that we’ve seen a couple of times in cinema, most notably in the James Bond film Die Another Day, where everyone’s favourite superspy used his to outmanoeuvre one of his villainous rivals in a dramatic climax within a collapsing ice palace.
MG paints a rather more mundane picture of their own invisible cars, as this public statement from their marketing department illustrates: "At first we had some trouble with the cars, as people kept walking into them, or we’d misplace them on the site. As soon as we placed the iconic MG badge on the front of them, using non-invisible materials, we were able to find them much more easily."
Collapsing ice palaces are all very well, but we do rather like the notion that MG had to solve the problem of hapless engineers constantly forgetting where they’ve parked their own cutting-edge cars.
Lexus Lane Valet
Don’t let the suspiciously plausible name fool you – this idea is not just ludicrous, but ludicrously dangerous.
Lexus claimed that its Lane Valet would improve traffic flow, which is a noble enough aim. Slightly less noble was its proposed execution – namely that it would “improve traffic flow” by essentially hacking other people’s cars and shunting them aside. Or, to use Lexus’ preferred terminology, the non-existent system would “utilise unprecedented radar and lane monitoring technology to communicate temporarily with the slower vehicle, and do the driver the courtesy of safely moving their vehicle for them.”
An attractive idea maybe, but let’s be honest, in real life it’s one that would be disproportionately utilised by drivers who enjoy testing the limits of their car down live motorways. In other words, you’d probably be far more likely to find yourself being the one shifted aside rather than the one doing the shifting. All things considered, it’s probably just as well that this is one that stays firmly in the realms of fiction.
Of course, there’s also the fact that if any of these cars were indeed real, it might pose more problems for recycling them. After all, how would you depollute a car full of honey? How would you know for certain that you’d done a good job recycling an invisible one? Thankfully though, we don’t have to worry about any of that here at EMR Vehicle Recycling. We stick to recycling more manageable cars instead!
We’re good at it, too – in fact, you can count on us to get you the very best price when it comes to your old car. We have more than 70 years of experience to our name, and Authorised Treatment Facilities all over the UK, so wherever you’re based, we’re never far away and can provide gold-standard service.
It couldn’t be easier to get started. All you need to do is enter your car reg and postcode into the fields on our homepage, and you’ll have an instant online quote before you can say scrap my car. Curious to see how much your car could be worth?
