TWOC is going on?

Mental – but stable

BACK in July, I travelled to the Kia factory in “Sarf Korea” for a nose around. It was pretty evident back then there was something bubbling – something high-performance, rear-wheel drive and exciting just around the corner. It was alluded to, but not expanded upon, that Kia was about to shift up a gear. And here it is, launched at the Detroit show, the new Kia Stinger. It’s a sort of swoopy coupé GT with a 365bhp twin turbo V6 engine and rearwheel drive. It seems they shifted into eighth gear because that’s how many automatically selected cogs the Stinger has. When you’ve head-hunted engineers and designers from Audi and BMW, this kind of outcome is inevitable, I guess. Can’t wait to drive one. MY Facebook feed is full of people who’ve had their Land Rover Defender stolen. This always utterly baffles me.

Who is stealing them and, more importantly, why are they stealing them? I’m struggling to think of a vehicle that’s worse to drive than an old Defender.

Masochist TWOC-ers, that’s who…

Masochist TWOC-ers with gold card RAC breakdown membership, obviously. HONDA don’t tend to do mental but occasionally they surprise us and this, their self-balancing motorbike, certainly caused a stir at the recent CES technology show in Las Vegas.

Rather than using heavy, expensive gyroscopes, the Japanese firm has drawn on its experience with ASIMO, their creepy robot, and the UNI-CUB suitcase-like personal mobility device. Below 3mph the steering stem rakes itself out to increase stability and a series of motors and servos make microscopic adjustments to the steering inputs to keep the bike upright. It doesn’t even need a rider aboard to function. Personally, I find nothing funnier than watching overweight motorbicyclists falling over in petrol station forecourts while stationary, usually when an overweight spouse tries to climb aboard without informing the pilot first. If Honda put a stop to this with their clever selfbalancing technology, I will be sorely unimpressed.