Here’s our roundup of the best (or most foolish) April Fools’ Day pranks from the world of cars.
Every year car manufacturers have ‘a bit of a laff’ on the 1st of April, a day better known as April Fools’. Here, we show you the most hilarious of the bunch, so you won’t need to ponder whether they’re real or not.
Nissan Gym
Driving is hardly a tiring activity, and it can lead to you putting on a few extra pounds if you spend long enough behind a wheel. Fortunately Nissan announced a Gym button, a feature that makes life harder for you by turning off all assistance systems.
Press it and Gym mode disables the power steering, electric windows, makes the accelerator, brake and clutch pedals harder to push and stiffens up the gearbox. Your movements are tracked by a Gym and Go app and apparently you can burn up to 1,415 extra calories per week.
“We take the health and wellbeing of our customers very seriously – after all, we want them to live longer and buy more cars. So we developed a system that helped them achieve it,” Dr P Taka said. Maybe it’s not such a bad idea after all?
Skoda ShadeChange
Skoda’s April Fool brings a whole new meaning to mobile disco. Its £500 ShadeChange optional extra uses multiple panels across the car to let you change the entire finish or individual panels as you see fit via a palette option in the infotainment display.
“Customers are no longer limited to the colour they choose when they order the car,” Dr Gio Kyng explained. “When drivers are feeling in a jolly, spring-like mood, they can switch the whole car to a bright yellow. On the other hand, if they are feeling sad because their cat is unwell, they can switch it to black.”
Volkswagen Caddy Maxi Mini
“Good things come in small packages,” VW claimed. Like its Caddy Maxi Mini, which is an ultra-dinky ‘one man van’ that gives you the reliability and quality associated with the German manufacturer, but in a more parking space-friendly size that allows it to park at right angles to the kerb.
Load space is extremely limited for the one person it can carry, but you can fit a Labrador in the back if you take out the toolkit, apparently.
Dr Avin A’laf said: “We see the Caddy Maxi Mini as our equivalent of the chocolate bars at the supermarket checkout. We hope that when customers come and buy one of our multi-award-winning full-size vans, they’ll add a Caddy Maxi Mini as a little treat.”
Vauxhall Vivaro Taxi Kebab
Some of us Brits will be sad to hear the Vauxhall Vivaro Taxi Kebab is, in fact, a joke because after a boozy night out there really is nothing better than dog meat in pita bread to soak up alcohol.
The nine-seat Combi model comes with two gas-fired spit rotisserie grills, salad bowls in the arm rests, chilli dispensers and various tasty sauces that will disagree with your stomach the next day. Perhaps not the taxi for vegetarians, then.
“With the launch of the Vivaro Taxi Kebabi, we really believe we’ve given our customers something to sink their teeth into,” the not-so-imaginatively named April Fulls said.
Clarkson goes green
The Guardian newspaper was pleased to announce ex-Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson was the latest celebrity to support its campaign for fossil fuel divestment in a bid to help the planet.
Clarkson said he had experienced a “wake-up call” after punching Oisin Tymon and his subsequent sacking from the BBC: “Top Gear was a wild ride for an ordinary bloke like me. But there comes a time when a man’s got to ask himself what he really stands for. And for me, that’s sustainable energy, traffic calming and an end to xenophobia and prejudice.”
“If you’d told me a month ago that I would be joining the tree-huggers in their hand-knitted kerb-crawlers I’d probably have punched you. “But then I thought: ‘Where does physical aggro get you – apart from a few penalty points on your P45?’”
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