This Toyota Camry is a dragster in disguise.
Image 1 of 8: BMW i3. Photo / Supplied
The annual Specialty Equipment Market Association show - you probably know it as SEMA - in Las Vegas always gives The Good Oil plenty to get excited over, and even more to make fun of.
And this year was no exception ...
A revelation that shocked even us was that our absolute favourite car of this year's SEMA show was ... a Toyota Camry.
But, in our defence, it is one hell of a Camry.
Toyota clearly decided to have a bit of fun this year and the result was the Sleeper Camry. While on the surface it appeared to be a slightly more aggressive Camry, pop the bonnet and you are in for some serious surprises.
The first one is - there is no bonnet.
Instead the entire body lifts up like a dragster. Because that is exactly what the Sleeper Camry is!
Under the fridge-spec silver body lurks a custom full tube-frame chassis and a 5.7-litre supercharged V8 with a full nitrous system that pumps out an eye-watering 634kW of power.
Throw all that power through a couple of drag racing slicks out the back and you have a Camry that will scorch down the quarter- mile in 9.8 seconds. Pretty sure your granddad's Camry couldn't do that.
Alas, Toyota has no plans to put the Sleeper Camry into production.
• Zhen Yin, 32, from Jiangxi Province in China, knows exactly what it's like to have a bad day. His started to go wrong when he blacked out driving his new Porsche Cayenne on the highway and rammed a moving truck. The day got worse when his Porsche became stuck under the truck and the truck driver failed to realise he was there and dragged the car for 13km before other motorists alerted the truckie to the Porsche stuck on his rear bumper. Then police turned up and not only recognised Zhen as a notorious drug dealer they had been hunting but also found that the boot of his Cayenne was full of cocaine.
• A Japanese university lecturer was arrested recently for assaulting ... an ambulance. It seems Tetsuki Hirayama, 54, loathes the sound emergency vehicles' sirens make so much that, when he came across the ambulance parked on the side of the road, he started kicking it. It turned out this wasn't his first go at beating up an ambulance - in the past six years he allegedly "interfered" with ambulances in Tsukuba City on 12 occasions.
While it is all fine and good to develop and build electric cars, it does add to the growing issue of where to charge them.
After all, we are not all at home all the time.
While Tesla has its string of "Supercharger" stations across America (probably all ready to spit out thousands of robot soldiers, if The Good Oil's theory about Tesla founder Elon Musk being a James Bond-esque super-villain proves correct ... ), covering the rest of the world with adequate charge points is somewhat more challenging.
Popping into a Starbucks and hoping nobody notices the extension cord may work for a little while, but BMW may have a solution in the pipeline - street lights!
Or rather, specially developed LED street lights with built-in charging stations that could simply and easily replace existing street lights.
The company already has two working examples outside its HQ and is rolling out a pilot programme in Munich next year.
Some motorists in America have been issued tickets for failing to stop for a duck on a pedestrian crossing.
But to be fair, the duck was nearly 2m tall.
On Halloween, police in Fort Lee, New Jersey, conducted their Pedestrians in the Crosswalk safety programme, which randomly tests drivers' willingness to stop for a pedestrian at a designated crossing.
Motorist could hardly claim they didn't see the test walker - an officer dressed in a Donald Duck costume.
But many drivers didn't stop for Mr Duck and are angry at their fines.
Driver, Karen Haigh, said the US$230 ($292) fine she and other drivers received was unfair, as some drivers might not have stopped because of the strange circumstances.
"It scared me," Haigh said. "It was a huge duck. If it was a person dressed normally, I think all those people would have stopped."
Sweet as! Kia serves up beer and icecream at SEMA.
Heading back to SEMA, it seems Kia has finally figured out a surefire way to sell cars - make ones that serve beer and icecream.
After all, they are the two major food groups (well, the ones that really matter).
The most important one (beer) is served up via the Ballast Point Sedona, a Kia Sedona kitted out to be that greatest of all things - a mobile bar. One that can come to you.
That just brings a tear to our eye ...
Inside the Sedona are two "functioning Micro Matic taps", 40 metres of copper beer-cooling coils and space for up to four kegs of beer. And that is all we really need to know.
On the sweeter side, the Kia Soul EV has been converted into an icecream truck (of sorts) complete with a custom liquid nitrogen cooling system to keep the creamy treats frozen.
Now, if they could only come up with a car that served espresso and one that dealt solely in bacon.
Then the Good Oil could die truly happy.
Probably of a heart attack.
You know all those guys who buy Ford Rangers and then try to make them look like F150 Raptors? You know the ones - they love matte black, black alloy wheels and those huge black grilles with FORD written on them.
Ford loves those guys. But now it seems Ford is either hoping they will look further downmarket, or it is just making fun of them.
The potential joke comes in the form of the EcoSport Storm - a tiny Fiesta-based SUV with ridiculous Raptor styling cues.
Most likely a desperate attempt to spread some of the Raptor's cool and credibility the diminutive EcoSport's way, the Storm was rolled out for the Sao Paulo motor show and, we actually have to admit, it looks kinda cool.
Now, if they could actually squeeze a 6.2-litre V8 into it, it would actually BE
cool ...
306KW
The power output of the Ford F150 SVT Raptor's 6.2-litre V8.
2KW
The power output of the Ford EcoSport Storm's 1.5-litre inline 4.
3600 KG
The towing capacity of the Raptor.
500 KG
The towing capacity of the EcoSport ...
The offenders took off in a stolen vehicle with cigarettes, cash and other items.
