The Good Oil: Leaf-lugger

The Nissan Leaf ute. Taking utility conversions to a ... err ... different level. Photos / Supplied

Now that the concept of a big Aussie 6 or 8-cylinder RWD ute is all but dead and buried, ute owners not wanting to head in the traditional 4WD/diesel ute direction may have hope yet.
Actually, just kidding. This is about as far away from the bogan ute as it is possible to get - this is Sparky, Nissan's Leaf EV-based parts carrier.

Before you get all excited about the idea of a Leaf ute, don't. Sparky is a one-off born out of necessity and a twisted sense of humour.

Used to haul parts (and people) around Nissan's massive technical centre and proving grounds in Stanfield, Arizona, Sparky is the result of what happens when engineers think "why the hell not" and drink WAAAY too much Red Bull.

"I needed a project for a team-building activity so we can bring the team together. We had a need for a truck," said Roland Schellenberg, head of Durability and Reliability.

Keeping up our strong suspicions that way more energy drinks than should be sensibly consumed are involved, Arnold Moulinet, Schellenberg's colleague in the D&R group, said, "After he told us it was going to be the Leaf that we would redo, I went home and stayed up till like four in the morning making all kinds of designs for what would work.

"We basically got the stock Leaf, and after reviewing a bunch of designs of pickup trucks that we have here at Nissan, we decided to go with a Frontier [Navara] bed.

"I'm pretty good at taking cars completely apart to the bare frame and putting them back together again to resume testing."

And so Sparky the half-Leaf/half-Navara mongrel was born from an all-night binge of Red Bull and Cheezels. We like to think.

We are the world
• We are not sure how an Austrian police officer came to be tugging on a piece of fishing line on the side of a road, but it turned out to be a bad idea. The fishing line was attached to a bucket filled with explosives ... and manure. The officer was two metres away from the bucket of unpleasantness when it exploded.
He was uninjured, however, he was "covered with manure" according to a report.

• Ping Ch'ang, a 27-year-old woman from China, probably should have made sure of a few things before she bought a new Porsche Boxster. The main thing being that she could drive.
As it turned out, she managed to mix up the throttle and brake pedal just seconds after leaving the dealership. She did considerable damage to the brand new Porsche, along with several other cars waiting at the nearby traffic lights.

$24.6m for 30 Rollers

Stephen Hung is a flamboyant Chinese entrepreneur who doesn't do things by halves. Or with much taste. From his multi-coloured Flock of Seagulls haircut to his suits, he is over-the-top and unashamed of his wealth.

He is also building a new luxury hotel and casino in Macau, as you do when you have made lots and lots of money out of hotels and casinos. You build bigger, fancier, more tasteless ones.

But what sort of cars do you buy to ferry your hyper-rich guests to and from the palatial hotel you are charging them the GDP of a small island nation to stay at?

The tackiest, most ostentatious thing you can imagine, obviously. So to that end, Hung has just ordered a fleet of 30 matching red custom Rolls-Royce Phantoms (Extended Wheelbase models, of course), two of which will be the most expensive the company has ever built.

The deal is costing Hung US$20 million ($24.6 million) and the cars will be crimson red (gulp) to match the hotel, and the interior will feature ... chequered trim. Each car will be specially fitted with a bespoke clock from Graff Luxury Watches, while the two most expensive models will get gold-plated interior and exterior trim.

But don't you worry that poor little Stephen may be stretching the overdraft with this purchase. According to the Washington Post, when the 200-room hotel - to be called the Louis XIII - opens, it will be one of the most mind-blowingly luxurious (and, safe to say, extraordinarily tacky) places on the planet, with rooms costing up to $123,000 a night.

Horror awaits fans in Vegas

Scion Slayer

Outside of the United States a few people know of Toyota's Scion sub-brand, but no one buys them because they are sold only in the US.

There, only a few more people know of Toyota's Scion sub-brand, but no one buys them because they are a badly misjudged attempt at selling cars to young people.

Now, in an attempt to stem the flow of magnificent disinterest in Scion, Toyota has teamed with two new partners to add more excitement to the brand -the son of a famous skateboarder and a heavy metal band that writes songs about Nazis, serial killers, necrophilia and did its best stuff in the '80s anyway...

Scion Hawk

Scion will debut the "Scion x Riley Hawk Skate Tour xB" and the "Scion x Slayer Mobile Amp tC" at this year's SEMA show, and The Good Oil just can't wait! Oh, no, we can. We really, really can wait.

"Slayer's fans are going to be excited when we reveal what a metal-inspired Scion tC looks like," Slayer guitarist Kerry King said, in a press release that accompanied two sketches of what horror awaits at the SEMA show in Las Vegas from November 4 to 7.

"Working with Scion has given us another way to reach new audiences and inspire them to keep going down their own paths," he said. Paths that most likely lead away from Scion. And probably Slayer for that matter.

Now, don't get us wrong, The Good Oil appreciates a bit of Reign in Blood or Angel of Death as much as the next '80s metalhead, but that doesn't quite align with a struggling sub-brand of a giant Japanese carmaker in a way that we could ever think of as "successful".

Oh, and Riley Hawk? He's Tony Hawk's son and doesn't seem to have done much other than that to deserve his fame. That seems FAR more like Scion, to be honest.