Sniff Petrol

Whilst the BRDC continues to act as if it isn’t annoyed by Bernard Ecclestone’s pretend plans to move the British Grand Prix to Donington or Brands Hatch or the Birmingham Superprix circuit or something, the Silverstone circuit itself is about to undergo an exciting revamp that will surely make it the best Formula 1 facility in Northamptonshire.

The new developments won’t be ready for this year’s British GP of course, but work will start on them the very second the last car has left the circuit’s car parks after this year’s race. And when those bulldozers kick into action in September, they’ll have quite a job on because Sniff Petrol has seen the new Silverstone plans and they’re certainly ambitious, whilst retaining the character of the probably-loved circuit and building on its strengths.

One of the first areas for attention is bleakness. For years, the British Grand Prix at Silverstone has been famed for the flat, unremitting miserableness of its views and the facelift scheme seeks to capitalise on that by levelling many of the surrounding fields and building over them with huge expanses of grey, slightly cracked concrete. In the original redevelopment plans, these areas could have been used for race day parking but in fact the planners have been much more canny than that, carefully securing an addition 30 acres of damp, muddy field in which people can lose their cars.

Other facilities haven’t been forgotten either because the new Silverstone will boast a 124 percent increase in the amount of space devoted to stalls selling cheaply made F1 related crap, including 216 percent increase in the areas devoted to stands hawking ghastly Ferrari branded clothing. There will also be a threefold increase in the number of rusty and unnerving fairground rides and, for more privileged F1 fans, a huge increase in the amount of helicopters that can’t take off because there are somehow too many helicopters already in the air.

Finally, it wouldn’t be Silverstone on Grand Prix weekend without the overpowering smell of chips and, under the new plans, that disgusting stench will be more all-consuming than ever thanks to a massive increase in chips stalls and a state-of-the-art fan system which will mean almost no part of the circuit will go without a vile greasy smell getting into the back of everyone’s throats.

The exciting new Silverstone facilities are expected to be ready just around the time Bernard Ecclestone decides he can’t be bothered having a Grand Prix in Britain at all any more.

There was excitement amongst fans of Web 2.0i Ghia last night with news that Sniff Petrol is to become an online magazine. Older readers may remember Sniff Petrol’s previous attempt to reinvent itself as a blog, and also recall that it was shit. However, there are no such worries this time around as the neterweb’s orangiest car-based nonsense site hurtles headlong into the rush to be the latest new automotive webzine that is claiming to be the first even though it probably isn’t.

“These are very exciting times,” said Sniff Petrol marketing director, Thisisa Madeupname. “Old school paper magazines are dead, webzines are the future. Of course, Sniff Petrol has never actually been a paper magazine but we did print off some old editions from the website and make them into a magazine just so we could have a meeting with some design consultants from Shoreditch and decide that it was dead”.

The beauty of the webzine according to Madeupname is that, using the latest computer technology, it can replicate many of the features of an old fashioned print publication. “Technology has thankfully got to the point where it can at last pointlessly replicate old fashioned things instead of looking forward,” he says. “What we’re going to offer here is things like page numbers on the bottom and, most excitingly, a graphical interface that looks like the pages of a magazine turning. It was developed by the same company that worked out how to put cassette hiss onto MP3s. We’re also very excited by a new feature that will exactly replicate the first time you open a new print magazine by allowing a big virtual pile of annoying adverts for car loans to fall out onto your desktop”.

However, new Sniff Petrol won’t be all about just inexplicably trying to make your computer look like a magazine. Madeupname promises some radical innovations too. “How many times have you been reading a magazine and thought, I’m enjoying listening to some of my own music in the background, but what I really wish is that the magazine itself would play me some repetitive tune that I don’t really like? We can provide the solution to that. And, without wishing to give too much away, I think we’ll have a pleasant surprise for anyone who’s ever thought, Damn, I wish it took longer to turn the pages of this paper magazine, and if only some of the content didn’t appear properly on the page and I had to leave the magazine for five minutes whilst it re-loaded”.

The new Sniff Petrol webzine will be completely free, until we have to start charging for something that basically no one’s going to pay for because it’s on a computer.

STOP PRESS: Sniff Petrol isn’t going to be a webzine after all. It was a bollocks idea.

There was reassurance this week for people who like to be patronised so horribly that one of their arms falls off following news of an EU proposal to put cigarette packet-style large print warnings on car advertisements.

‘We realised that we hadn’t been wasting nearly enough of everyone’s time with condescending nonsense,’ said EU spokeringman Alain Turdisquirts. ‘That’s why we are making this proposition, in the hope that people will spend more time thinking before they buy a new car. Specifically, that they will think: Gosh, aren’t the EU a bunch of mithering fucking money wasters’.

The exact wording of the new warnings is as yet unclear but, in line with the EU’s stance on not allowing anyone to enjoy themselves, proposals are said to include ‘Danger: This car may allow you to get to places you want to go’, ‘Attention: This vehicle may accidentally cause you to have some fun’ and ‘Warning: This car may prevent you from having to trudge around in the rain trying to find a bus stop that isn’t full of used heroin’.

As an added bonus, Mr Turdisquirts was quick to reassure EU residents that similar warnings will NOT be appearing on power stations, industrial chimneys and domestic boilers. ‘Why would we want to do anything about the real sources of CO2 when we can just pick on cars again,’ he said, like the blinkered, patronising, reactionary cockbag he so clearly is.

Lotus has announced plans to celebrate making 5000 different and slightly pointless special edition versions of the Elise by building a new special edition Elise.

The Elise 5001 will come only in a distinctive shade of green that is exclusive to this model, even though it’s almost identical to another colour that was on some other Elise last year, or maybe the year before. This will be topped off by an orange stripe that is unique to the 5001, although you can order it as an option on other Elises.

Completely the exterior makeover are a set of distinctive alloy wheels with one very special feature – where the regular Elise offers only black painted wheels as an option, the 5001 boasts alloys that are sprayed very very very dark grey.

Inside, Lotus promises a number of changes, although it warns that ‘a number’ is actually quite a vague expression and can of course include ‘a number’ such as one. That’s why the 5001 will come with an exclusive badge badly stuck to the dashboard and some seats and stuff that are just out of the normal car.

If you could spec all these options on a regular Elise, which actually you can, it would cost you £35,990, whereas the 5001 will retail for just £35,985. The bad news is that, with so many special editions to make, Lotus has been forced to limit production to a total of just one 5001. However, Hethel sources say the company is already planning its next exciting new special edition model, tipped to be called the Elise Milking It.

There was joy amongst linguists this week following the discovery of a new benchmark for slipperiness. Language experts say the new reference point will rapidly become a convention for anything that is beyond the slippery qualities expressed via existing references such as ‘a bar of soap’ and will be known simply as ‘a Mosley’.

‘This new idiom will come in very useful,’ said Dr Andthe Medics, Professor of Talking And Stuff at St Scomemarchingin College, Cambridge. ‘Previous conventions were actually quite limited when it came to adequately encapsulating something that could get away, even when it seemed to be quite impossible for it do so. “As slippery as a Mosley” really does solve that problem’.

It emerges that language fans are not the only ones expressing amazement at this new idiomatic standard. ‘Fuck me, I thought I was a devious twat when it came to getting away with stuff,’ said an eel, yesterday. ‘But it turns out that “a Mosley” has taken it to a new and almost completely unbelievable level’.

‘I’m frankly staggered,’ added liquid mercury, speaking from its home, inside a thermometer. ‘I’ve always prided myself on being impossible to nail down but I think even I would struggle to escape from something that really should have had me bang to rights for being a embarrassing old fart, yet “a Mosley” did just that’.

However, not everyone appears to be quite so impressed with “a Mosley”. ‘This is an outrage,’ said a wall yesterday. ‘People are always throwing shit at me to see what sticks and you know what? Some of it does. Frankly, I’m sick of it. At least I’ve now learned from reading about “a Mosley” that in future if I want to find that, against all righteous expectation, somehow no shit has stuck to me whatsoever, I just need to get my leathery old arse spanked by a German speaking hooker’.

There was good news for dumb, selfish twats yesterday as reports that a regular tanker delivery was going to be ‘slightly late’ led to fuel buying panic at one local petrol station.

The mindless, stupid mithering began around 1pm at the Exachell garage near Wretching, in Disgust, when a member of staff was overheard noting that a fresh shipment of petrol ‘might be around 15 to 20 minutes later than normal’. The news immediately triggered a petrol buying panic amongst customers.

‘As soon as I heard that the main storage tank was down to only 900 litres I knew I had to act,’ said garage regular Dave Spooool. ‘Although I had already filled my car, and actually I only drive about 70 miles a week, I rushed back to the forecourt and filled the boot, glovebox and door pockets with extra fuel. Mind you, I’m so stupid I once forgot how to use my arms’.

Local cretin Angela Stave was another of those caught in the precautionary buying palaver. ‘When I drove onto the forecourt someone told me what was going on and to be honest it scared me. What if there was a medical emergency and I couldn’t get my kiddies to hospital during that vital 20 minute window when my car only had 7/8ths of a tank full? It doesn’t bear thinking about. That’s why I filled my tank with both petrol and diesel, just to be on the safe side’.

Exachell staff say even those who weren’t intending to buy petrol were drawn into the mass panic, such as area fuckwit Irene Mizzz. ‘I had spent the morning frigging myself over the memory of Princess Diana and was on my way to buy a second, uncreased copy of the Daily Express when I noticed a commotion at the petrol station. I immediately realised it was the kind of grunting, thoughtless mass hysteria I enjoy and decided to buy as much petrol as possible. Obviously I don’t actually own a car so I had to go and buy one of those first and by the time I got back the unthinking mob behaviour was over. I was so disappointed I decided to fire bomb the place so I could spend the afternoon moaning about Muslims’.

An Exachell sposkesmans was quick to reassure everyone that the tanker delay was a one off and that people should stop being so Christingly fucking thick.

After cracking down on drivers who use a mobile phone, smoke or eat, the government this week announced that it is considering an even more radical safety move – making it illegal to use a steering wheel.  

‘Our research shows that having to grapple with a large circular device whilst in a fast moving vehicle could be quite literally lethal,’ said Lesbo Bells, spkoksman for the Department of Wasting Everyone’s Time With Unbelievably Patronising Shite. ‘That’s why we’re looking at proposals to make this dangerous pursuit illegal as soon as possible’. 

DoWETWUOS sources say the proposed new ruling will be enforced with a raft of new digital cameras, mounted on top of other cameras which will be used to read people’s Switch cards so that all the money can be drained from their account the instant they are seen doing anything illegal involving a motor vehicle, such as driving it, sitting in it or looking at it with anything but that sort of dismal, lemon sucking face that people on bicycles do.  

‘Banning people from using the steering wheel whilst on the move will significantly reduce accidents and road casualties,’ Mr Bells claimed. ‘Do you have a car?’ he added. ‘Oh good, please give me another £538 for no reason whatsoever’.

The Beijing Motor Show is in China. And if Steve tells you otherwise it’s only because he’s trying to sell you three train tickets to Manchester. Here is an report from there. China, not Manchester.

The Chinese car makers were out in force at Beijing this year as China’s standing in the automotive world grows and many leading players seized the chance to show a wider audience just what they’re capable of. Over at Bong Fung Motor Factor the star attraction was the Mighty Weasel 888F Wandering Leaves, an exciting sports car concept that appeared from some angles to be on fire. BFMF claim that when this car enters production next year it will offer a 47 percent reduction in unexplained deaths.