Youtube round-up: The greatest car stunts

A global stunt theme this week, with the clearly straight-jacket-demanding pictorially aiding the case for the prosecution.

First stop the Middle East, followed by France, Dumbsville, America again and a European racing circuit.

Arabian knight riders

As Evel Knievel would preach, when it comes to the brand of stuntage that pre-determines a more daredevil element, two-wheels are advisable.

Never let it be said that our car-obsessed chums from the Middle East don't like to rock the boat when it comes to rules that aren't exactly set in granite.

Although the barge-like three-tonnes of a Nissan Patrol do normally roll a tad on corners, their noble drivers don't usually opt to turn their four wheel drive into a two wheel at the immediate flick of the steering wheel and temporary leave of senses.

There are less death-defying ways of line painting.

• Watch the Nissan Patrol two-wheel stunt.

Snow Patrol versus C'etait un Rendezvous

This week we this week tighten our seatbelts, adjust our mirrors and signal for Snow Patrol's guitar-stropping roadside assistance and chuck ourselves headlong down bombastic boulevards avec une Ferrari.

Shot on the mean streets of Paris sometime in the 1970's, C'etait un Rendezvous is the story of one car, one stopwatch and one take, and according to a certain Jeremy Clarkson 'makes Bullitt look like a cartoon'.

As legend has it, the short, impromptu film seeks to capture the thrill-seeking of French Director Claude Lelouch who happened to blow the profit he made on making some art house film or another on a Ferrari 275GTB and proceed to blast unashamedly around his native Parisian streets at the crack of dawn. Contrary to this are rumours that a Formula One driver might have been hired for the job.

Anyway, indie-would-bes Snow Patrol chose to re-stoke interest in the flick recently by adding their own suspect soundtrack to the seminal footage and voila.

• Watch C'etait un Rendezvous video.

Radio-controlled car clears house

Just in case the title didn't excuse, sorry, explain all, this interesting piece of none-celluloid captures some slightly plump American kids with too much time on their hands attempting to orchestrate the jumping of one of their parents house' by a radio controlled buggy.

After several pitiful run-ups to gage velocity, altitude, down force, clearance and other such meaningless mathematical equations the miniaturized car gets airborne and lands in the back garden.

Miraculously it only hemorrhages its bonnet and on reacquainting itself with terrafirma by its wheels it succeeds in driving off after completion of stunt.

• Watch the remote-controlled car house jump.

Ken Carter attempts to jump from Canada to the US

After painstakingly constructing the sort of ramp that you could launch the Space Shuttle from, a man with an industrial amount of hair and clad in a garish jumpsuit is watched by other folk with strained expressions and treacherous clothing conduct a series of safety checks on his rocket-and-bourbon-powered car.

This is moments before he hits the loud pedal, drives a few hundred yards down a dirt track, crosses his fingers and bids to be the first man to drop into a watery channel - jumping a mile over the St. Lawrence River from Canada to the United States in a rocket- powered car - in the most aerodynamically-wanting automobile in history. Which he does. Only he didn't.

He of hair isn't Ken Carter as advertised. Carter was replaced in the Lincoln by friend Ken Powers, who emerged alive after making it 500 feet.

Unlike poor Ken Carter who - on openly mocking this leap of faith - went and jumped further in a Pontiac Firebird which sadly had the long term effect of killing him instantly.

The jump is immortalised in the documentary Devil at my Heels.

• Watch the 1-mile rocket-powered car jump.

How Fast is a Grand Prix car?

As piloted by Mr. Formula One, if you're of Spanish parentage, Fernando Alonso, a race-prepared McLaren Mercedes MP4-22 gave some of the quickest vehicles the German manufacturer had assembled to date a charitable head start, counted to four million, slowly, then came out to play.

Unfortunately the lesser Mercs hadn't hidden so well and were spotted by the F1 car nearing the end of the competitive circuit.

So it did the decent thing and powered up behind them and put them out of their delusional misery. In 0.3 of a second or something as ludicrous.

• Watch How fast is a F1 car? video

Ken Block's 170-foot jump

Paling against Ken Carter's 1-mile effort, Ken Block's jump in a Subaru WRX STI rally car is notable for its picture-perfect meticulousness.

• Watch Ken Block's jump video.

Extreme hill-climbing

Hillclimbing abroad takes on an entirely different nature, often consisting of scrambling up a near-vertical hillface and competing generally against gravity, or death.

Not to be attempted in a Hyundai Santa Fe, this really does stretch the limits of machine tolerances, human bravery and Newton's Third Law.

• Watch the extreme hill-climbing video.