Welsh rugby star swaps the ruck for a truck

WALES international rugby star Scott Williams swapped his studs for driving shoes this week as the 2014 British Truck Racing Championship came to Pembrey Circuit. The Scarlets centre was given professional tuition before taking the wheel of the 1,200bhp 5.5-tonne tractor unit himself – and nearly ending up in the crash barriers. Despite his little off, Scott impressed his tutors and even did well enough to warrant a potential future in racing.

McLaren plan to make windscreen wipers obsolete

McLaren plan to make windscreen wipers obsolete Much of the ‘clunkiness’ in cars – stuff like wind-up windows and a cranking handle – have been made obsolete in cars as technology arrived to make things work better, but one thing that remains on modern cars from the dawn of the motoring age is the windscreen wiper. Invented by Mary Anderson in 1903 after she realised drivers of the first motor cars were having to lean out of the window in rainy conditions to see where they were going, it became a standard fitting on all cars within a few years. Windscreen wipers have certainly improved over the years as technology has developed, but they’re still basically a strip of rubber moving across the windscreen to clear rain.

BMW to push build-to-order for X3

BMW wants you to buy a car the European way: The German automaker, which wants to pass Lexus as the leading luxury brand in the U.S. by 2012, is trying to convince its U.S. customers that they should order their BMWs with exactly the stuff they want on it, not settling for whatever is on the lot.