In an era when massive black grilles threaten to subsume the entire front end of some cars, it's interesting to see the 500 family desperately pretending not to have a grille in a nod to its rear-engined heritage.

Yeah, I was tangentially getting at that. You can basically buy the same 2.0TFSI engine and platform bits badged as anything from a Skoda to an Audi, and making anywhere from 200bhp to 400bhp.

RSC2 was so good.

It's a shame VW can't find a more exciting package to put this drivetrain in.

Who's dropping 50 large on a Golf though?

And gaudy LEDs!

You can tell it's special, because it says 'special' on the can.

Please nobody let Hennessey near a real one.

We get the iQ and the FR-S (GT86) as Toyotas, none of the others. Lexus lineup is pretty much the same either side of the Atlantic.

I imagine it might involve the phrase "Stop resisting!"

Scions aren't sold in the UK, pretty sure it's a Celica.

Think that's a Celica.

Nope, UK road distance and speeds are imperial still. Fuel's sold in litres, but cars' mileage is quoted in mpg. Go figure.

Red and white hatband is another giveaway. Didn't stop them giving me 3 points for speeding in the Blackfriars underpass a few months ago, though. I was only giving it the beans because it sounds so good in there ...

The price of this balance and smoothness is weight and size. A cross-plane crank is inherently larger, since it's got crankpins on two axes, and it's much more heavily counterweighted and balanced, all of which require a larger, heavier crankcase to hold it all, which makes a less favorable overall weight and center…

He plead guilty.

Agree with all of that – the evidence suggests that either the new formula is totally at odds with Vettel's driving style, or that Ricciardo has massive potential. Maybe both.

Is anyone with $50k to spend going to be looking at VWs, though?

It's just a 3-door GTI that looks like it melted a bit.

That's a pretty piece of plastic. I wonder what the engine looks like.