10 Cool Facts About Car Throttle In 2014

Cars we've driven

Over the past 12 months we’ve driven some incredible machinery (everything from exotic supercars to school run superminis). Which got us wondering: just how vast were the differences between all these vehicles?

The most expensive car we drove was the £358,488 Rolls-Royce Phantom Drophead. Perspective? For that price you could buy 42 of the least expensive car we drove, the MG3, which costs £8399.

The Phantom also packed the biggest engine in 2014 for CT; its 6.75-litre V12 could swallow more than seven of the Twingo’s 0.9-litre three pots (the smallest engine we drove this year).

The most important figure, obviously, is power. We loved the Toyota Aygo’s quirky character, but its feeble 1.0-litre three-pot was the least powerful we encountered this year, with a measly 69bhp. By contrast, the McLaren 12C we filmed in May made 616bhp from its twin-turbo V8.

Finally, the quirkiest car we drove this year was the Morgan 3-Wheeler. Its 2.0-litre V-twin engine popped and barked and caused the single rear wheel to scurry across the tarmac. Oodles of fun.

Manufacturers

Which manufacturers graced the pages of Car Throttle most often in 2014? Unsurprisingly, BMW was the runaway winner with 248 related articles posted this year. In second place it’s Ferrari with 157 articles, and third is Porsche with 151.

Headlines

We pride ourselves on having fun with our headlines and being descriptive without resorting to clickbait. Sometimes that means our headlines are long. Here are the longest headlines on Car Throttle this year:

Most words - 24
“An ATV Doing A Burnout On The Back Of A Flat-Bed Truck That’s Also Doing A Burnout Is About As Redneck As It Gets”

Most characters - 129
“Meet The Leaf EV Pickup: Built By Nissan’s Engineers As The Quirkiest Way To Distribute Parts Around Its Massive Technical Centre”

Words + characters - 23 words, 127 characters
“This Weekend Sees The V8 Supercars Take On The Legendary Bathurst 1000 - This Ridiculous Lap From 2003 Will Get You In The Mood”

Headlines were also, on average, longer this year. In 2013, the average headline was 10.4 words long with 57.5 characters, while 2014 saw an average of 12.6 words and 69 characters, an increase of 17.4 per cent.

Where you all come from

The wonderful thing about the internet is that it brings people together from around the world. When we post an article, it can be viewed by anyone anywhere, and we like to think it’s that diversity which makes our community so great. But where do most of our page views come from?

You’ll be unsurprised to learn that the top four countries CT is accessed from are English speaking: United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Australia. The highest non-English-speaking country to visit our pages is Germany, followed closely by Sweden and the Netherlands.

How many teas did Matt make?

Life inside CT Towers is relaxed and fuelled by caffeine (we even have a bot built into our internal messaging system that randomly selects people to get a round of tea in).

Self-appointed Chief Tea Maker Matt Robinson makes, on average, one round of tea per day. After some basic calculations (that are almost certainly inaccurate), we have figured out that Matt has made approximately 1680 mugs of tea and coffee this year. Milk and two sugars, please!

Weirdest freebie

When we attend the launch of a new car, we often receive a small gift as a reminder of the trip. This is usually a small replica model of the launch vehicle, but can be totally bizarre (everyone received a small stuffed cow at the Seat Leon Cupra launch).

Our favourite odd gift this year was a branded golf ball from Skoda, inviting us to its crazy golf Christmas party. In amongst the assorted car tat on the office desk, those balls are rather conspicuous…

Most popular Car Throttle Garage cars

When we launched the Car Throttle Garage, it was an instant hit with you all. Since then, over 10,000 cars have been uploaded, with every section of the car scene represented.

The most viewed car this year was Panagiotis Katsoulis’ Mazda Miata. Second place goes to Bungle’s E46 M3, while third belongs to Bruce Laureto’s gorgeous Nissan 280ZX.

At the top of the Hot leaderboard (calculated by ‘yes’ votes minus ‘no’ votes) is IceHound’s Datsun 240Z, which has amassed a huge rating of 1502. The second highest rating goes to KeiRB’s Nissan Skyline R34 GT-R MspecNur, with a rating of 810.

We recently launched our user-generated content platform Discuss, and we’re delighted to see the ways in which you guys have been embracing the idea.

The most visited post on Discuss this year was the Barbie Power Wheels dyno video above, submitted by youknowwhothisis18. A very close second goes to Olli Karttunen, with his ‘budget tyre retread’ submission - let’s just say we don’t recommend you try this! And finally, rounding out the podium, was the recording of a Grand Theft Auto V car meet, submitted by Filip Ulemek, which caught the imagination of gamers and car guys everywhere.

Discuss leaderboard

This is the moment you’ve all been waiting for. When we introduced a score to Discuss, you naturally wanted a leaderboard to see where you stand in the big world of Car Throttle. That’s on our ‘to do’ list, so in the meantime here’s a quick roundup of the Top 10 Discuss users so far.

In the comments

One of the most important aspects of what we’re trying to achieve at Car Throttle is to create a buzzing community of petrolheads. The comments are vital to that goal, which is why we’re showing you the biggest members of our community. There’ll be no surprises who’s at the top!

We sure hope you’ve all enjoyed the ride as much as we have! Here’s to a massive 2015!