1) A front-wheel-drive BMW
Not only that, but it’s an MPV! The 2-series Active Tourer adds insult by looking like a Kia Carens and, by having an even-numbered name, completely flouting BMW’s already baffling naming convention. The fact that the car is okay to drive is irrelevant: this is a nasty case of a favoured USP being lobbed out in the cause of mass appeal.
2) The death of the Australian car industry
The news that Ford was pulling the plug on its Australian operations sent shockwaves, but even the most morose petrolhead can’t have imagined GM following suit, meaning the end of Holden. At a stroke the Oz V8 superpowers are gone, leaving Shan-o and Damo with absolutely nothing to talk about in the pub. Toyota then said it too was jumping ship, with 2500 jobs going by 2017. Bummer!
3) Google’s car
While auto giants chip away at future tech inch-by-inch, the race to develop a car that can drive itself in busy city traffic seems to have been stolen by… some Californian geeks? While the idea of a car without a steering wheel is anathema to keen drivers, we’d sooner that than have Citroën build a search engine.
4) Citroen rediscovering its 2CV form
There have been glimmers for a while, but every quirky Citroën concept seemed to end in either ignominy or sales flop. Then came the C4 Cactus and its Cadbury’s Dairy Milk flanks, confirming a return to Citroën’s intelligent, relevant, and slightly mad best.
5) The great Corvette museum disaster
At 5.30am on a February morning motion sensors in Kentucky’s National Corvette Museum alerted security to a problem. Shocked guards rushed in to find a 40ft wide, 20ft deep sinkhole had appeared, swallowing eight valuable ’Vettes. Bad, but there have probably been less believable statements made on ’Vette insurance claims in the past.
6) Chevrolet quitting Europe
Citing a ‘challenging business model’ Chevrolet baled on Europe, saying it would ‘leave it to Opel and Vauxhall.’ So the plan had been to take the badge immortalised by icons like Corvette and Camaro, stick it on some sh*tboxes and hope. And it failed?
7) A right-hand drive Mustang
In fairness to us, we have waited 50 years and there’s been no right-hooker ’Stang. So we had kind of given up on it. As for the proper rear axle, well, even Nostradamus didn’t predict that.
Click below for the rest of CAR’s top 100 moments of 2014:
The nine best sports cars of the year
Four seismic Nurburgring laptimes
Eight cars that changed our minds about electric power
Top six people we talked about
Six wishes for 2015
Six back-from-the-dead stories
Six things we said goodbye to
Top 10 motorsport moments
Six biggest disappointments
Top five tech trends of 2014
Top 10 quotes of 2014
10 great CAR magazine features from 2014