Here’s A Round-Up Of Car Makers’ 2018 April Fool Pranks

April Fool’s Day is something we generally steer well clear of, on the day at least. We know you don’t want us to bring you ‘news’ about in-built hairdressing equipment, tyres made of baguettes or new fuels derived from faeces as if they’re actually funny.

But we’re not against a cheeky after-the-fact round-up of what went down on the day. The slow clapping we’ll leave to you. Let us know your, err, favourite of the bunch, and which you reckon should never have seen the light of day.

Ron Dennis, the man who built McLaren’s super-successful F1 team and who oversaw the creation of the legendary F1, the brain-child of designer Gordon Murray, had a well-documented obsession with regularity and precision. He left the company on not exactly peachy terms following a boardroom bust-up, and the firm’s April Fool video seems to be poking a bit of fun at the fallen giant.

Claiming that the McLaren Technology Centre’s floor tiles and the depth of its lake are now being measured daily, the video also says that synchronised tea-drinking and staff movements based on metronomic timing have significantly increased efficiency. This robotic workforce gives way to McLaren’s preferred take on itself about half way through.

2. MG's alpaco poo fuel

In what’s possibly the stinkiest of the April Fool’s Day fake press releases, MG’s engineers have apparently been researching the potential of alpaca poo as a fuel for years. Using ‘anaerobic digestion’ to break the furry load-bearers’ bum waste down into pellets that can power a car, this one plays on MG’s recent decision to stop selling diesel-engined cars in the UK.

This curious effort from Hyundai UK could almost be mistaken for a serious video, if it weren’t for the jaunty voice-over. Still, ‘Cacao Corner’ is so daft that it could almost be real; a mixture of cocoa, milk and butter spread over a test track corner to record the physical imprint of the tyre under load.

Obviously, you have to ignore the fact that a butter-based paste probably wouldn’t do a lot for the actual grip levels, but hey, it’s an excuse to watch a pretty little bit of footage featuring the brilliant i30 N Performance.

4. Sheep roaming the Castle Combe circuit

This one wins the inaugural Car Throttle Award for Photoshop Excellence in Sheep-Related April Fool Imagery. Clearly, someone has just found some stock pictures of sheep and loosely placed them on a shot of Castle Combe. We love it.

Of course there’s a whole press release to go with this sterling piece of Photoshoppery. An ancient by-law has been discovered, says the circuit, that allows local farmers to graze livestock in the fields in the middle of the track near the city of Bath. To help protect both sheep and drivers, extra signs have been placed neatly at apexes, with plans for a cattle grid at one corner. All very droll.

5. The Seat Arona run by small change

You know those static ride-on cars at the seaside, built for small children and only used by teenagers who think they’re being funny? Those awful, jerky, wobbly little examples of daylight robbery have inspired this fictional crossover; a Seat Arona that runs on copper coins. Just keep dropping them into the slot on the centre console and it’ll keep purring along, they say.

The name of this inspired(ish) slice of coin-driven whimsy? The Arona Copper Edition, of course. It’s yours in Eclipse Orange metallic paint, and the press release comes with a gold-standard example of rubbish April Fool’s Day spokesperson names, in the form of Rhea Sonible-Price.

If you have more than one child, your life is basically spent breaking up arguments between them. You might be able to punctuate that with the occasional nap or perhaps by wolfing-down half of the meal you made yourself, but it’s mostly just refereeing the endless running battle between your little bundles of joy. Skoda’s side-splitting solution for arguments in the car is a set of speakers built into the new Karoq’s front headrests.

Sensors automatically detect an escalating fight in row two and the speakers direct waves of opposing white noise to dull the roar, allegedly still allowing the driver to hear emergency sirens and the like. Named, in fine 1 April style, the QuarrelKancel system, and we have another facepalm-inducing spokesperson: Dr April Fürst.