The Good Oil: Eating out never better

While the modern food truck has moved a considerable way from the wheezy, smoke-belching old Bedford dispensing greasy burgers and soggy chips of years gone by, Peugeot has decided to take it one step further.

Well, several steps further, really.

Designed and built to be a functioning outdoor restaurant at the Milan Design Week (from the 14th of this month) before taking up its place on the French stand at the 2015 World’s Fair Expo (yes, that is apparently still a thing!), the Peugeot Foodtruck is a  fresh take on a stale old theme.

Dubbed “Le Bistrot du Lion”, the  truck includes a food preparation area that includes two grilling plates, four induction burners and a deep fryer, as well as a ventilation system, a 400l  underfloor chiller and a 350l  fridge.

The trailer packs a professional espresso machine and, yes really, a DJ booth. A 46-inch screen relays all the action from the kitchen to the 30 patrons that the Foodtruck can feed at any one time.

French chef Sven Chartier, of Saturne and Le Clown Bar in Paris,  is set to be the first culinary tenant of Le Bistrot du Lion and will also be using a new Peugeot salt and pepper mill set that was designed to accompany the truck, the company’s press release breathlessly informs us.

It also  reminds us that Peugeot “is the only brand in the world that continues to manufacture tableware, while also designing and producing automobiles, bicycles and scooters”.

What a brilliant idea

For a fair while, manufacturers have had a fondness for April Fools’ Day jokes. And just like those odd occasions that something slips through into production reality that you would swear was  supposed to be a joke  occasionally  one  slips out that would make a  brilliant production car.

This year’s example comes from  Mercedes-Benz when they announced all AMG cars would be known as “Mercedes-AMG”.  Oh, wait ... that was serious ... the joke was actually the fantastic Mercedes-AMG Sprinter63 S.

But it shouldn’t just be a joke, because a Sprinter van packing a 375kW 4.0-litre twin-turbo V8 would be just about the greatest car we  could imagine — all that room in the back could hold plenty of extra tyres to deal with all the  wheel spinning that would result ...

Bernie bonkers over F1 for girls

Miniature F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone has had a lot of ideas that have, at first glance, seemed insane — it is only at second and third glance that the true depth of their insanity has become apparent.

But it seems he has outdone himself this time by floating the idea of a separate Formula One series just for women.

The idea to give the girls their own little series, probably with a lovely pink logo, came about during an interview with British newspaper, the Telegraph.

“I thought it would be a good idea to give them a showcase,” the 84-year-old said. “For some reason, women are not coming through — and not because we don’t want them. Of course we do, because they would attract a lot of attention and publicity and probably a lot of sponsors.”

So much wrongness in so few sentences.

Current Williams F1 test driver and full-time woman Susie Wolff said: “I have raced my whole career in motorsport as a normal competitor. Why would I ever look for a race where I was only competing against women?”

We are the world

■Police in the US town of Ferrellton, Pennsylvania, were recently called to a Burger King restaurant  after a woman motorist trying to place an order  was bitten by a pig that was in the drive-through lane blocking traffic.  Stories just don’t come more perfectly formed and poetic than that. The police eventually managed to round up  the snapping porker and return it to its owner at a nearby farm.

■ Any number of things might cause road chaos in Thailand, you  wouldn’t expect it to be ducks. But that is exactly what happened recently when a stampede of  thousands of ducks brought traffic on a main road to a standstill after they invaded it. No cause has been established for the sudden stampede of feathered creatures.

Wings not meant to be flying 

Honda’s many-winged beast

In the past few months The Good Oil has pointed at and laughed  at the latest aero packages for the United States  IndyCar series, as the latest cars have sprouted more  silly-looking wings in places that just shouldn’t have wings.

It seems that at the recent Grand Prix of St Petersburg a spectator had her skull fractured by a piece of one of the numerous wings after it flew into the crowd following an accident on track.

Brigitte Hoffstetter was taken to hospital after the piece of carbon fibre hit her. She was reported to be in a stable condition and is expected to make a full recovery.

The increased debris is also worrying  drivers, with  the brilliantly named Aussie, Will Power, summing things up  well when he said “it’s not that they’re brittle, it’s the fact that you’ve got more stuff hanging off”.

The Good Oil couldn’t have said it better.

Number Crunching

6 WOMEN

Have taken part in an official F1 race weekend.

5 WOMEN

Have raced in F1.

12 RACES

Lella Lombardi is the woman who has been in the most F1 races.

0.5 POINTS

She is the only woman to score points in F1.