I've listened to this 27 times now, you should too

There are times where you find yourself on the toilet. The crap drying on your bumhair and your legs going numb because your monkey brain figured it would be a great time to succumb to Mr. Zuckerbergs algorithm and keeping that thumb flicking through endless amounts of people eating viral foods, doing life hacks and starting Singers. Now, that last on got my legs going really numb this time.

Just watch it. Ignore the ASMR-thingy's and the typical influencer shite, just listen to that last part. I've done it 27 times in a row now. Sorry, 28.

Do you hear that? Not the rumble, although it's nice and Singer totally nailed it. It somehow found a way to make an old Porsche sound good. But I mean that little mechanical cranking noise. That's the indication this is something special here. I could totally listen to that 29 times in a row. Maybe even thirty.

But that is neither here nor there. Me listening to weird engine sounds would probably help me qualify as a mechanic sooner than being a car journalist. I somehow find myself without support when I tell people I like the sound of English V8's over most other cars in the world. Even over V12's.

But that is neither here nor there either. Back to my legs going numb and my crap drying into what the Dutch call 'tarrels' between my cheeks. You see, this video got me thinking about special cars and how they always seem to keep existing, even through rough times like the one we're living through right now with the big angry Orange American trying to show the world how small his appendage is by picking an uncalled fight with Iran.

You'd say special cars would be the single worst investment you could do, even in the best of times. Most of them lose money by just standing there being oogled by you and your mates. Which is worth a considerable amount, I agree. But you'd probably think twice about calling Singer and ordering a new car while a war is raging around you, wouldn't you?

But you'd be thinking wrong. You'd actually be calling Singer and telling them to put haste on the order, because you want your car even sooner. Hopefully before the real dried out shit hits the fan. At least, that is what is really happening right now. Ferrari is flying cars on chartered planes to the Middle East to satisfy their customers and Rolls-Royce is looking at even better solutions to get the cars there. Only Bentley is giving the Arabs the finger and is telling them to pick from cars that are in stock in the region. I'll bet you they'll won't be holding on to that too long.

It seems like the ones serving the richer people on this planet know something they're not sharing with the rest of us. While every car company in the real world is already struggling to make ends meet, the upper class is happily launching new multi million cars or going even deeper with more personalisation options on the already insanely expensive versions of their expensive cars. Somehow the 1 percent of the 1 percent seems even more willingly to dump heaps of cash on unique cars. Even if that means waiting even longer. That's apparently fine as well. I mean, Koenigsegg is finally starting production on the Gemera after making buyers wait for six years, and everyone is happy about it.

You've probably guessed I'm not rich, because I'm missing something here. Is it because the rich are so rich they just don't give a flying f and want the cars they want. Or is it the other way around and are they figuring that the world is ending sooner than later, which means: "treat yo-self!" Please tell me. I'd love to know.

In other news:

The US really doesn't seem to like the Chinese. US Senator Bernie Moreno is trying to block all cars coming from that country from entering his country. Or as he is putting it way more eloquently: "We’re not going to allow Chinese automakers into this market. We’re going to prevent the cancer from coming into our market, and we’re going to need the other countries to do chemotherapy." Boy, that escalated quickly. Can't imagine how much chemotherapy costs when you have to pay for it yourself...

Robotaxi's, or as I like to call them: the gift that keeps giving. Today they caused a bit of Chaos in China. Self driving cars from Apollo Go operated by internet firm Baidu, just stopped driving in Wuhan. Why? Because of an unexpected error. Fun times. People panicked, called emergency services and needed to be rescued because of the unsafe spaces the robotaxi's stopped in. But we're so close. So, so close. We've been almost as close for about a decade now.

Remind me, how far are we into 2026 again? About three months, right? Yes, yes. That would be the right time to name the winner of the best car of 2026, wouldn't it? Nothing will happen in those other nine months, left in the year. So let's just call it. The BMW iX3 is the best car of this year, according to an international jury of 98 motoring journalists from 33 countries. Or is it the Mercedes-Benz CLA, which got voted Best car of the Year 2026 on the sixth day of this year by 64 car journalists from 23 countries? Just remember the same people voted the Renault 5 E-Tech as the car of the year 2025, which of course is not true at all.