https://www.carthrottle.com/post/10-weird-and-obscure-car-facts-every-petrolhead-should-know-about/

I am going to dedicate this blog post to weird car facts over the past few decades. Automakers do a lot of interesting things to push their cars to the absolute limit, or to save as much money as possible. I found a bunch of these online at the link above, or I read about them in Road and Track magazine.

1. Porsche 959 Gelande

This one is by far my favorite. I read about this just a couple days ago and this was the fact that led me to decide to write about this for my next blog. The Porsche 959 is, in my opinion, one of the greatest cars of all time — if not the greatest. It was revolutionary in so many ways. It had a basic form of all-wheel drive traction control ahead of its time. It had hydraulic dampers which replaced anti-roll bars, anti-lock braking which many claimed to stop in distances that did not seem possible at the time, electronically-lowered ride height, and more. Porsche actually lost money on every car sold, and only a few were ever sold. Bill Gates had one. On a side-note — I looked to see what they cost now. I found one which was listed at $1.25 million and was previously owned by an Earl in London. These cars really were exclusive and owning one now would be a dream.

The weird fact comes with the gear knob. To pass national noise-limiting tests, the car had to run in 2nd gear and officials would measure the amount of noise the car output. The Porsche 959 was too loud in 2nd gear to pass the test but Porsche did not want to limit their new car in any way, so they changed around the gears. They changed some ratios and named first gear “G” for Gelande — the German word for terrain (meaning off-roading). Obviously no one would take this supercar off-roading, but when officials put the car in 2nd gear, it was really 3rd gear and it passed the test. I included a picture from https://www.reddit.com/r/cars/comments/8cr623/what_are_your_favorite_manufacturer_shenanigans/.

2. Toyota MR2

The Toyota MR2 is a rearwheel drive car — but is it really? Instead of manufacturing a new axle, Toyota took the front-wheel drive system off of an older Corolla and put it onto their new MR2 (expect as the rear axle). They definitely made it work and I doubt even owners of the car and enthusiasts realized it. Apparently Toyota even left on certain key characteristics from the front-wheel drive axle, including now useless tie rod mounts. You probably won’t even notice until you jack up the car and really give the car a look.

3. McLaren P1 GTR

The McLaren P1 is a fantastic hybrid vehicle known for its style, but more importantly its speed. It is unbelievably expensive, but with that you will obviously get one of the fastest cars in the world in this decade. In the GTR version, the car is made from so much carbon fiber that it does not need a roll cage at all. It passes all minimum standards of strength and from crash tests. This must be one of the first cars to do this as technology develops even further.