The biggest motoring stories in 2021 (Part 2)
Saturday, 1 January 2022
Happy New Year and welcome back to the second part of our look back at the most popular stories on Stuff Motoring in 2021, as well as our personal favourites.
The first half of 2021 saw a wide range of stories being widely read, while the second half saw an increase in interest in videos of people doing stupid things in cars. Perhaps a reaction to Auckland’s return to lockdown and people just wanting to have a laugh at other people’s misfortune and not think about Covid-19 for a bit?
Anyway, let’s kick 2022 off with our look at the second half of 2021’s most popular – and our favourite – stories on Stuff Motoring.
JULY
A video of an unsecured mattress causing chaos on an Auckland motorway and a 1987 Toyota Corolla with 150,000km on the clock selling for more than NZ$90,000 in the UK were easily our top stories for July, while interest in what the Clean Car Discount scheme would do to ute prices also continued.
**READ MORE:
* The biggest motoring stories in 2021 (Part 1)
* Tesla owner straps car with dynamite and blow it up rather than pay $22,000 in repairs
* Cars are suddenly worth $4.5 trillion, and it's not all Tesla
* Autonomous truck logs first no-human road test
**
But our favourite story for the month concerned a road test of a car that will get hammered buy the Clean Car emissions penalties, but is awesome nonetheless – the mighty Ford Mustang Mach 1.
AUGUST
August was dominated by a pair of polar-opposite EV stories; one from the USA concerning a couple whose house burnt down after their Tesla burst into flames – highlighting something that worries a lot of people about EVs – while the other was more positive; we spent some time in a Kia Niro EV with 100,000km on the clock and no sign whatsoever of battery degradation – something else that potentially worries people about EVs.
Stories about a Waikato man who drove a loader through a bunch of illegal street racers and an utterly immaculate million-mile Honda CR-X also got a lot of attention in August, as did one about a lunatic in Russia who turned a Lada into a flamethrower. The video really does need to be seen to be believed…
Apart from the Lada flamethrower, our favourite story of the month was easily the one about Toyota teaming up with Lego to build a life-size replica of a Supra. Because you can never have too much Lego or too many sports cars in your life.
SEPTEMBER
EVs again took the lead in September, with a three-way comparison test between the three cheapest EVs available in New Zealand – the Peugeot e-208, Mini Electric and our long-term MG ZS EV (the cheapest by far) – being the most-read story of the month by a comfortable margin.
Our favourite story of the month was also our second biggest and features a video of driver in the USA who realised far too late that their massive caravan was way too tall to get into an underground carpark and does some serious damage with their misguided attempts to deal with the issue…
Other big stories in September also included idiots doing stupid things in or around cars, with footage of a man faking being hit by a Tesla (and the Tesla’s cameras busting him) being widely watched, as were videos of a truck driver in Mexico City causing chaos and a woman who thought her Porsche SUV was a boat, while a U.S. man’s discovery of an industrious squirrel using his truck to as a place to stash thousands of nuts also proved popular.
A pair of auction stories – one about a mint condition Ford Falcon GTHO Phase III setting a record, and one about a barn find Subaru rally car going under the hammer – also did remarkably well in what was a big month for us!
OCTOBER
The story of a Belgian family who experienced a terrifying ride when the moveable bridge they were driving across unexpectedly started opening while they were on it was the most popular story in October. And, yes, the Blues Brothers comments did flow.
Proving that people were still fascinated by EVs, our next two biggest stories were about the unseen disruption electric vehicles were causing among third-party suppliers to the car industry and the reveal of the refreshed MG ZS EV that is getting a new face, better interior and a bigger battery. And, yes, it will be coming here.
But by far our personal favourite was the fourth most-read story of the month – the one about a Ford Cortina station wagon going up for auction in the UK that also included the staggering revelation that there are actually only 70 of them left on the roads there!
NOVEMBER
It took until November before we saw our single biggest story of the year, and it was an unexpected one, with Nile Bijoux’s look at a study that suggested thousands of drivers would need support when a law banning smoking in cars with children present triggered a strong response.
The second most popular story in October was all about Elon Musk getting up to his usual antics on Twitter again and wiping US$40 billion off his company’s value as a result…, while the reveal of the new Ford Ranger also went big for us. No surprise there, as it is easily the best-selling vehicle in New Zealand still…
It was a draw for our favourite story of the month, however, with ‘Harvey’ the absolutely brilliant half restored Holden Kingswood Sandman ute (and before you comment, yes Holden did indeed make ute versions of the Sandman!) and the return of the infamous 11 foot 8 bridge in the USA that regularly opens up trucks and RVs like a can opener.
DECEMBER
And finally, to round out the year, a piece about an accidental trip on the unopened Transmission Gully motorway was of interest to enough people to make it our biggest story of December, followed by a story about an Auckland teenager who turned a business going door-to-door offering to wash cars into a company with commercial contracts that also caught your collective imaginations.
Articles about a distracted driver destroying a Christmas tree in the UK by driving into it while looking at his phone, a barn find ‘71 Ford Falcon XY GT heading to auction and Toyota revealing a full line up of EVs – including the mythical all-electric Hilux ute – were also very popular.
However, our two favourites for the end of the year were our first drive of the Polestar 2, an EV that came late in the year, but hugely impressed us, and – of course – the absolutely awesome Batmobile replica that is up for auction in the United States right now… we can never go past a Batmobile!
And that is it – the most popular stories on Stuff Motoring in 2021! Here’s hoping 2022 is a little less viral (in an actual virus sense) and has more driving, and we look forward to bringing you all the motoring news that unfolds throughout the course of the next 12 mnonths.