Car April Fools Stuff - to Infiniti & Beyond

BMW release PRAT roundels for the UK General Election

A quick round-up of car-oriented April Fools stories from BMW, Infiniti, MINI, the Goodwood Festival of Speed and others.

There were so many April Fools stories running around yesterday from car makers we really didn’t want to spend the day regurgitating press releases designed to demonstrate car makers’ normally well-hidden sense of humour. But some were well-conceived so we thought we should bring you a few, just so you know what went on.

BMW in the UK decided to be topical and issued a press release telling is they were offering their Political Roundel Attachment Tag, which would offer the BMW Roundel in colours to suit owners’ political persuasion in the run-up to the General Election. If they’d left it at that – together with the photo – it would have been great. You could soon have worked out that the acronym for Political Roundel Attachment Tag is P.R.A.T. But they had to spoil it by putting the acronym in the fool release. They must assume the great British Motoring Journo is a little less than bright (blimey, on a good day we’re almost sharp).

Infiniti announced that they were introducing Gastronomi Technology (see what they did? Change the ‘y’ for an ‘i’ at the end of Gastronomy. That’ll have ’em thinking this is real). The system monitors the sounds of tummy rumbles and can then navigate the car to the nearest food outlet that suits. When the system detects the right level of rumblings it flashes up a knife & fork symbol and asks the driver if they would like taking to the nearest food.

The Goodwood Festival of Speed also got in on the act. They announced that this year’s festival would be powered by methane from the Estate’s herd of Short Horn dairy cattle. The press release said, quoting a comment by a manufacturer’s spokesperson, “It’s enlightening to see that Goodwood is taking no bull, and the organisers deserve a real pat on the back. This wind-powered solution is udderly electrifying.“

There were lots of others. MINI in the US claimed to offer MINIMagic on the new MINI Clubman, which would allow unlimited exterior colour changes. The AA announced they were to issue patrolmen with Jet Packs a la James Bond to skirt over traffic jams, and Auto Windscreens announced prescription windscreens for the terminally short sited (without acknowledgements to Del Boy or John Sullivan – and Ford did this two years ago with the then new Kuga. Poor effort).

Not a Vintage year. But some raised a smile.