It’s silly season in the automotive industry as manufacturers attempt to outdo each other with increasingly extravagant April Fool’s day pranks.
Askaprice.com rounds up the best and worst attempts to trick the unsuspecting public, hacks and websites but first an attempt by sister site MotorTorque:
Bernie Ecclestone plans potholes for Formula One circuits:
BMW
Things must be going well at BMW HQ as the German brand was given the go-ahead for two elaborate and presumably costly hoaxes.
The first saw the company plant an M3 pick-up truck – complete with camouflage befitting of a secret product trial – at the Nurburgring.
Blogs, journalists and car websites were quick to jump on the spied images of the ‘new model’, setting tongues wagging and pick-up fans into a fervent frenzy.
Unfortunately the BMW Ute is a prank, despite the release of a wide range of brilliant images. The model is real however, and has been built as a one-off.
BMW traditionally takes out an advert in a national newspaper, advertising a fictional model, this time the focus was on the Royal wedding with BMW offering an M3 Royal Edition model:
Kia
Kia’s attempt focussed on the ‘strike rate’ of bird droppings that can ruin the appearance of its shiny new cars on its forecourts.
To do so the Korean brand is lining up a team of bird experts throughout the summer months and ‘migration’ season to divert returning birds away from the forecourts and back into park and woodland:
Seat
Spanish manufacturer Seat has come up with a regional, interactive satellite navigation system that changes its dialect according to its whereabouts.
The S.M.A.R.T (Seat Media Audio Recognition Technology) uses Automatic Regional Speech Equivalence (A.R.S.E.) software to identify which region it’s in and which dialect to use to make driver’s feel more at home with their sat nav.
For a full list of soundbites from London, Birmingham and Bristol follow the jump.
And finally...
Land Rover
Not to be done on the expense front, Land Rover looked to match BMW’s legendary April Fool budget by staging its very own press conference, showcasing the revolutionary ‘self-levelling tax disc holder’.