Europe is the center for a lot of things, art, culture, fashion but there's a certain decadence to all of this excess. Its not all serious, some of it is just for the fun of it. Sure a chocolatier might be very committed to his work but when a customer walks into a chocolate shop...its really about hedonism. You know, that uber fabulous feeling you get for spending half of your weeks grocery bill on champagne truffle and candied orange peel dipped in chocolate. Motor sports is another of these "non-essential-but-make-life-interesting" activities. Pretty cars with big engines racing around a track get men (and women) out of their beds just to see who wins. So you can imagine my surprise and delight when I discovered news of a chocolate powered racing car. It seems to be a fusion of the best of both worlds.
Its not all trivial though, it seems this is the worlds first environmentally friendly racing car and they say it'll be launched in May. Now, the point was to create an F3 car using only renewable and sustainable products. So get this...the steering wheel is made out of carrots, the seat out of soy beans and the body is constructed out of potatoes. Its clever but crazy huh?
Not as crazy, some might say, as the developers hoping that racing chiefs will change the rules and let them race next season. The creators are from Warwick University and have designed the car to run on bio diesel and plant-based lubricants. So the car can run on chocolate. Now if only they had designed the interior out of biscuits and marshmallows you could celebrate the end of a race with a little F3 choccie fondue. Which is about all they can do at the moment because the engine doesn't meet regulations due to its unusual source of fuel. I certainly hope this doesn't mean that there'll be a shortage of chocolate in years to come.
Inventors are also hoping that some of the design features will be adopted by the big boys in racing like McLaren and Daddy Ferrari. Remains to be seen. Never-the-less...here's to new inventions and daring to go where no one has gone before...it's a bit like Tourism Radio actually, minus the chocolate.
Hmmm? Wonder what the tyres are made out of...
