The frenzied response in the US to the Ford Shelby GR-1 concept has brought forward a meeting of Ford executives to decide the replacement for the US$139,990 ($211,000) supercar Ford GT, the GR-1 donor car. "The meeting's set up and we should decide soon," said J. Mays, Ford's director of
design. The bigwigs have to pick between the GR-1 (top) and the Shelby Cobra. Mays says the shootout comes down to an issue of design and marketability. Both the Cobra - which was unveiled at the Detroit show last January - and the GR-1 share the GT's platform and much of its componentry. The thinking in industry circles is that the GR-1 is the better looker but the Cobra is the emotional favourite. The winner is likely to go into production in two years, about a year before the GT's limited-edition run of 1500 cars is completed.
Outsmarting the devil
Britain's Department for Transport wants a ban on in-car radar detectors, which it estimates are costing the Government up to £30 million ($82 million) a year in lost revenue from speeding fines. Plans for the ban came to light after a radar detector company ran an advertising campaign guaranteeing to pay a motorist's fine if the driver received a speeding ticket while the radar detector was fitted. The advertisement used a picture of a policeman holding a speed laser gun. The policeman was depicted as the devil - complete with horns. The advert caused outrage among the police and politicians. The British Government went to court in 1998 to try to make radar detectors illegal but it lost.
We are the world
Police in Madisonville, Kentucky, were baffled by a phone call at dawn saying that two pick-up trucks were being driven in a strange way on a back-country road by the one man. So they drove out and watched as a man drove one truck 100m, stopped, walked back to a second truck, drove it 100m beyond the first truck, stopped, walked back to the first truck, and so on. He told the cops his brother had passed out drunk in one of the trucks and he figured this was the best way to get his brother and both trucks home at once. The Madisonville Messenger said a blood-alcohol test showed that the good Samaritan should have been asleep too.
