Weird and Viral Automotive Stories of 2025
We’re continuing our review of 2025 on an amusing note by taking a look back at the weird, funny and viral stories involving cars and drivers, many of which were featured in our Buzz section.
Below are some of those things that made us laugh or scratch our heads here at The Car Guide. And come back tomorrow for a more serious look at the top 10 automotive stories of the year.
Read also
- Watch: Tesla’s Autopilot Fooled by Wile E. Coyote, Engineer Mark Rober
- Gravity-Defying McMurtry Spéirling Is First Car to Drive Upside Down From Idle
Elvis Presley's Guitar Car Listed on Ebay
There are custom-built cars, and then there are fantasy cars. One of the most spectacular of all time, the “Guitar Car” designed for the King of rock ‘n’ roll, Elvis Presley, made headlines again.
After disappearing for decades, the car wound up in Orleans, France and resurfaced on ebay earlier this year. The listing put a price of 10,000 euros (or $15,785 CAD), but when we checked, not a single person had placed a bid.
Tesla’s Autopilot Fooled, Wile E. Coyote-Style
Tesla’s Autopilot assisted driving system demonstrated its limits in a video that went viral thanks to former NASA engineer Mark Rober, who once worked for Apple on its car project and is now a star on YouTube with his own company called CrunchLabs.
With Autopilot activated, a Model Y managed to detect and avoid a collision with a pedestrian dummy when the latter was stationary, moving or standing in front of blinding lights, but not when fog or heavy rain hampered visibility. Saving the best test for last, Rober replicated the trick that the famous cartoon character Wile E. Coyote once tried to pull on the Roadrunner, namely blocking the road with a wall painted to imitate the surrounding landscape.
First Car to Drive Upside Down From Idle
McMurtry Automotive, the U.K.-based, high-performance electric car maker that set a new all-time hillclimb record at the Goodwood Festival of Speed back in 2022, hasn’t stopped blowing our minds ever since.
In a stunning world first, the company managed to drive its Batmobile-like Spéirling upside down from stationary. Yes, you’ve read that correctly.
Uber’s Lost and Found
In May, Uber released its ninth annual Lost & Found Index, highlighting the strangest and commonly forgotten items left behind by Canadian riders in the past year. Unsurprisingly, phones, wallets and keys make the list of the most commonly forgotten items. However, people aren’t just leaving behind everyday essentials. Some of the stuff found by Uber drivers had us scratching our heads.
A mannequin head with human hair, a Viking drinking horn, a Ghostbusters ghost trap, a chainsaw, a live turtle and lobster, a taxidermized rabbit, a urinal, breast milk, two mattresses and as many as 175 burgers—those are just a few examples of the peculiar items lost by Uber riders across North America.
A Flying Corvette
The same week that Chevrolet announced the 1,250-horsepower 2026 Corvette ZR1X, another wild C8 Corvette attracted attention on the web—and for no less spectacular reasons. In a YouTube video posted by Channel 199, renowned race car driver, drift master and stuntman Travis Pastrana shared his team's efforts to achieve a record jump with Chevrolet's mid-engined sports car.
The car’s speed for what would be a 110-foot (33-metre) jump had to be calculated and achieved with great precision. Pastrana and his team determined that the Corvette should ideally be going at 70-72 mph (112-116 km/h) when launching in the air. They pulled it off, barely, as the car nosedived at the end and hit the ground hard, triggering the front airbag.
The Year’s Biggest Fail
Vehicles sometimes get damaged during transport, including when they exit the platform they were secured to. This is what happened in July when an extremely valuable Ruf CTR a.k.a. Yellowbird was trying to reach its owner in San Francisco.
One of fewer than 30 units produced in the late 1980s and based on the Porsche 911, the renowned sports car from German tuner Ruf—which is worth several million dollars these days—had just been repainted in black in its original workshop and shipped back to California when disaster struck.
Former World’s Most Expensive Car Up For Sale
Unveiled at the Geneva Motor Show back in March 2019 as part of Bugatti's 110th anniversary celebration, La Voiture Noire quickly made a name for itself as the most expensive production automobile in the world at the time. The single unit sold for nearly $25 million CAD including all applicable charges and tax. It was finally delivered in the summer of 2021.
The owner’s identity has never been revealed, and it will remain this way since that mysterious individual decided to part with the car barely four years after taking possession. SBX Cars was put in charge of the sale, which was held with the utmost discretion and reserved for a very select group of potential buyers. As such, it is impossible to know the selling price this time.
Barbie’s Lexus
In September, Lexus unveiled a super-posh and glamorous concept based on its flagship SUV. Called "Glam LX" and designed with the help of Complete Customs, this one-off vehicle is brimming with fashion and makeup accessories, as if it were the full-service glam suite of a popstar... or Barbie.
“The Glam LX celebrates the latest chapter of Lexus, one that goes beyond comfort and craftsmanship to connect with our guests’ passions and desire for self-expression,” the company said.
A Weird New Car Air Freshener
EV makers have developed fake engine sounds and even systems that simulate gear shifts. Some are using humour to sell EVs, too.
That’s the case of a Kia distributer in Finland, which launched a strange advertising campaign through social media. In order to convince people who might be nostalgic of combustion engines, and perhaps even gas stations, the company announced a new car air freshener in the form of a gas can and with a gasoline-like fragrance.
Honda’s New… Prelute?
One of the new vehicles that generated the most interest and reactions in 2025 was undoubtedly the 2026 Honda Prelude. It seems everyone has something to say about this car. Well, one digital artist had some fun by transforming it… into a pickup truck!
Apparently, the idea came to him when someone mistakenly wrote "Prelute" when referring to the Japanese sports coupe. As you may know, in some countries including Australia, a ute is a pickup-like utility vehicle, typically in a compact size. The result is a Prelude with four doors instead of two, extra ground clearance and a cargo bed at the rear.
Pastrana’s Final Gymkhana
The latest installment in the Gymkhana series, called "Aussie Shred,” was released online just a few weeks ago and pushed the limits once again, if that's even possible. The action takes place in Australia, where driver Travis Pastrana is having a blast behind the wheel of his "Brataroo 9500 Turbo," a radically modified 1978 Subaru Brat pickup that boasts a staggering 670 horsepower and 680 lb-ft of torque.
In the spectacular 11-minute video, the wild beauty of the Australian landscapes adds a new dimension to Pastrana's masterful drifting manoeuvres, jumps and stunts, from his crazy descent down the track at Mount Panorama against several race cars to an incredible slide on the edge of a Sydney pier, not to mention the longest and highest jump in Gymkhana history—over a semi-trailer truck, to boot.
