Interesting Facts

1906 - Rolls Royce was founded. (And I still haven't been in one!)

According to car website HonestJohn, nine out of ten new cars are sold without a full-size spare wheels as standard. (About 25% of cars are sold with thinner ‘space-saver’ wheels, which allow you to travel at a limited speed for a short distance, to get yourself to a garage. Others have ‘run-flats’, reinforced tyres that allow you to continue on with a puncture for a limited time. Almost half of new cars are sold without any spare wheel at all, they are simply equipped with a repair kit: basically some sealant and an air pump that you use to temporarily fix the tyre. Q. Why are they doing this? A. Money. Not providing a spare wheel can easily save manufacturers around £100 per car. Cheapskates!)

In 2000, Bogota in Colombia became the first city to restrict the use of private vehicles throughout an entire metropolis for a day.   (The Islands of Sark and Herm (in the Channel Islands) are car free 365 days a year. Herm has even banned bicycles! I guess it's Shanks' Pony then.) !Note -  Shanks' Pony describes using your feet as a means of transport. 

 Hamburg, Germany’s second largest city, is planning to ban all cars from its centre over the next 20 years. ( Their new urban development scheme, “Green Network”, will see all vehicles banned in the city centre by 2034. Instead people will move about the port city, either via  public transport, on foot or by bicycle. Gives a whole new meaning to "on your bike".)

Reflected light cast by a building in London is allegedly so intense that it has melted parked cars. (According to City AM newspaper, the 37-storey tower known as the Walkie Talkie in the financial district, casts a beam of light at certain times of day that has melted parts of cars. It was designed by Uruguayan architect Rafael Vinoly, Mr Vinoly probably thought the sun never shines in the UK.)

According to online insurance company elephant.co.uk, residents of towns and villages in Scotland have the highest percentage of personalised number plates. (14% of motorists in the villages of Killearn, Strathblane and Fintry in Stirlingshire, have a personalised plate, compared with a national average of around 4%. I guess we all strive for recognition.)

Between 2008 and 2009, 921,840 drivers across Britain admitted crashing because they were distracted by a member of the opposite sex. (According to aA study carried out by Insurance company Direct Line, found 60% of men admitted to being distracted by attractive women whilst driving, and interestingly us ladies aren't completely innocent either; 12% of women said they took their eyes off the road to have an ogle at good looking men.) Time for a song I think:-

In what is probably the most expensive car crash in history, eight Ferraris, three Mercedes-Benzes, a Lamborghini and two other vehicles crashed in the southern prefecture of Yamaguchi, Japan. (Media reports estimate the damaged cars are worth at least 300m yen ($3.85m; £2.46m) in total. The good news is no-one was seriously hurt. As they say in Germany "Es ist nur Blechschaden" (It's only damaged metal).)

In the weirdest car recall in history, Mazda has had to recall 65,000 of its saloon cars in the US, Canada and Mexico after spiders were discovered nesting in their fuel pipes! (The first incident was spotted in October 2009, when a Mazda6 was brought to a dealer with a fuel leak. A spider had spun its web in the fuel tank vent pipe, which created a vacuum in the tank, eventually cracking it. Maybe they thought they were Lotus Spyders.) http://uk.cars.yahoo.com/04032011/36/spiders-prompt-itsy-bitsy-mazda-recall-0.html

Paris may is going to host the world's largest electric car sharing program. (The scheme, called Autolib, may help many Parisians get rid of the cars they have, saving them an estimated 7,000 euros ($9,200) that it costs an average owner to keep a car in the city. The city is starting with a fleet of 3,000 cars available for rent coupled with up to 1,000 battery recharging stations throughout the French capital.)

According to the Office for National Statistics in 1970 only half of the households in Britain had access to a car. (By 2008 that had increased to 78%, but that still means 22% of households still didn't have a car.)

According to a recent study published in the European Journal of Epidemiology, around one in five sporadic cases of Legionnaires' disease could be the result of not adding windscreen wash to a vehicle's windscreen wiper water. (The rare type of pneumonia is caused by water-dwelling Legionella bacteria. Not adding screen wash to the water may allow the bacteria to flourish under the bonnet of a car, which provides the perfect breeding ground. Having put together the last three IFs I'm beginning to get the feeling that something is out to get us.)

Nissan has developed a car which rotates 360 degrees. (This means no more reverse parking! I know what I'm writing on my pressie list to Santa this year.)

According to research carried out by DirectLine for the Daily Mirror, satellite navigation systems are being blamed for 300,000 road accidents each year. (Over 1.5 million drivers said that they had driven badly because they were consulting the devices, either by veering across lanes or making illegal manoeuvres. Might I suggest that if a sat-nav gives you an instruction that is likely to leave you in the middle of a river, or driving the wrong way down a road, ignore it.)

A female driver is three times more likely than a man to suffer whiplash injuries if her car is hit from behind. (Female passengers suffer from whiplash injuries when their car is hit from the front too. Believe me, I know.)

For years BMW has been refining its dual-fuel (hydrogen/gasoline) technology. They have now developed the mono-fuel Hydrogen 7, which runs solely on hydrogen. (According to Argonne National Laboratory it is "one of the lowest emitting combustion engine vehicles that have been manufactured." This is great news! Until you read the Spiegel that is, which says that the hydrogen dispensed at filling stations is generated primarily from petroleum and natural gas. So, the shiny new car puts about as much strain on the environment as a heavy truck with a diesel engine.)

The Bavarian company Herpa, a miniature model manufacturer located in Germany, announced at the International Automobile show in Frankfort a.M. that they want to put the Trabant back on the streets by 2009. (Now this won't be a model, this will be a full-sized car. But it will still be made out of plastic, so no difference there.)

A study by the RAC Foundation has found that around 71% of British workers travel to work by car. (Whatever happened to "Go to work on an egg"?)

Engineers at Stanford University have invented a car that can drive itself. (Junior is an ordinary-looking estate car - apart from £250,000 worth of sensors mounted on its roof. Personally, I'm not interested in a car that will drive itself, but once they've cracked the self-parking angle, I want one.)

14% of Rolls-Royce owners also own a private jet and 7% a yacht. (In addition, on average, Rolls-Royce owners already have an average of seven or eight cars, along with three to five properties. So, do you fancy working out the carbon footprint for these people?)