NEWS OF THE WEIRD

Compiled and edited by Alexander Johnson

If you’re old enough to have watched the old version of Top Gear, you might remember the episode where Jeremy Clarkson, James May, and Richard Hammond made automotive history as they featured the world’s smallest production car, the Peel P50. In that short film, Clarkson took the tiny three-wheeler inside the BBC headquarters in London, England and even managed to go into an elevator, while driving the Isle of Manmade microcar.

Originally built in the early 1960s and marketed as having space for, “one adult and one shopping bag,” the Peel P50 measured 54 inches (137 cm) long and 39 in (99 cm) wide. Only 47 were ever produced with less than 30 surviving today.

In the early 2010s, two businessmen revived the company and started offering hand-built replicas of the original, fitting them with either gasoline or electric power sources. Prices start at £10,379 ($12,700) for the base do-it-yourself kit that comes with a 2 kW motor, a battery that provides up to 50 miles of range, and everything else you need for a working, drivable, street-legal vehicle.

There’s also a Turbo version of the electric P.50, which comes with a slightly more powerful, 5.76 kW motor that ups the top speed from 30 miles per hour to 50 mph. The gasoline variant can be equipped with engines ranging from 49 cubic centimeters (cc) to 125 cc, but the company is advising customers to stick to smaller-sized engines so that the microcars can be registered and used as mopeds or light motorcycles.

Building a P.50 at home takes about 50 hours and you only need basic hand tools, as it’s a simple vehicle with few components. Enthusiasts that don’t want to get their hands dirty can order a factory-built unit, but the price goes up accordingly, with an MSRP of £13,972 ($17,000) for a base electric P.50

We know catalytic converter theft is completely out of control, especially for Prius owners in Los Angeles, but to hear that someone stole one off the Oscar Meyer Wienermobile is just a little too much. What’s next, sawing the batwings off the Batmobile? It’s just not right. Leave the Wienermobile alone.

Coming in at 27 feet-long and looking like a giant hot dog, the Wienermobile attracts a lot of attention. Unfortunately, as it was parked in a hotel lot overnight in Las Vegas on February 10, 2023, that attention left someone with the opportunity to hack off part of the wiener.

This wiener assault highlights the heartlessness of catalytic converter thieves. Considering the vehicle has a nice tall ride height and plenty of ground clearance, getting under it to use a Sawzall for some surgery would be temptingly easy.

Whoever did this crime was an absolute butcher. They didn’t just take the catalytic converter, they chopped off sensors and other bits from the Wienermobile’s exhaust system, making replacing everything more difficult and costly.

Catalytic converter thieves don’t seem to care who they hurt. In search of easy money as they chop converters off vehicles and sell them on the black market for big money, they have become a problem in many cities; although some have it worse than others.

There are all kinds of security devices sold on the aftermarket with the aim of deterring or slowing down anyone who wants to cut off a vehicle’s catalytic converter.

We can’t endorse any of them because we don’t know how well they actually work. One thing we do know, is a lot of people are frustrated about this crime spree, including Oscar Meyer.

There’s no doubt that the Chevy SSR was one of the strangest and most unique vehicles made in modern times. While we can debate all day long about whether it’s a sports car, truck, or modern hotrod, what would you say about seeing it in a dusty barn find-condition listed for sale on eBay?

According to the listing, a 2005 Chevy SSR in Slingshot Yellow is a “time capsule.” Apparently now cars which rolled off the assembly line just 18 years ago qualify for this so very overused term. Things get even weirder when the listing mentions this SSR has only been driven 950 miles with documentation to back that odometer reading up. Keep in mind the breakin period for these things is 500 miles, so this thing has clearly past this limit.

The Chevy may be dirty, but the body looks about as perfect as can be. Same goes for the interior. So if you’re really into the SSR and want one that’s pretty much like they were straight off the dealer lot, this one might have been your best bet.

Of course, getting something with such low miles was going to cost you. The listing price was a steep $49,875.

In case you don’t know, SSRs typically don’t fetch a hefty price on the market, but then again most have far more miles than this one. The auction of the dusty, low mileage vehicle lasted just 12 Days, so if you were looking for a 2005 Chevy SSR in Slingshot Yellow, sorry but the farm-found vehicle is gone.

To most, registering for a car license plate is a swift and relatively inexpensive process. In Hong Kong, a licence plate that only has the letter “R” was sold for about $25.5 million HKD or $4.3 million CAD at a Lunar New Year auction organized by the Hong Kong Transport Department on February 12, 2023 according to an announcement by the agency.

The winning bid for the plate was 5,100 times the reserve price which was around $5,000 HKD and represented more than 80% of the total auction.

Citing registration plate dealers who spoke to the media prior to the auction, the South China Morning Post reported that the license plate “R” was expected to net at least $10 million HKD. The dealers attributed the large sum to the association of the letter with racing cars and a lucky number in Chinese fortune-telling.

Surprisingly, this bid is not the record high in the city. On February 11, 2023, transport secretary, Lam Sai-hung, shared the rankings of the most expensive license plates auction in Hong Kong. The list showed a license plate with a “W” sold for $4.4 million CAD in 2021. He added that the sale of personalized license plates had gotten the government almost $104 million CAD since 2006. The quest for novelty car plates is not limited to Hong Kong though. According to Luxe Digital, a rare California license plate with the letters “MM” became the most expensive novelty car plate sold in the world at a price of $32.8 million CAD in 2021