The week that was: CarPlay, car-play, fair play and fair cop

Here’s a question for you: Have you tested your automotive knowledge with our inaugural Hump Day Quiz? If you like it we’ll run one each week giving you something to help you through the mid-week monotony and hopefully giving you bragging rights over your mates.

Here’s another: What turned 50 this week? If Nissan’s GT-R was a wedding anniversary it would be golden and if it was a person it would probably still be shaking off the hangover. We marked the birthday of a motoring icon with a whole week of celebrations and a look back at Nissan’s hero car milestones and half a century of high-performance stories.

Cars and their use were once again in the firing line this week. While Jaguar argued that hooning should be banned from all advertising, not just car ads, Greenpeace completely lost its mind and suggested that car advertising should be banned altogether. Hmmm.

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While there is evidence to suggest electric cars are worse polluters than combustion power, but that won’t be the case as soon as our government gets its act together and starts supporting renewable energy.

Maybe the greenies should be focusing on the endeavours of the car industry to create clean zero-emissions cars like this cool Volkswagen concept, which is also actually green.

As if environmentalists implying cars are antisocial as cigarettes and alcohol wasn’t laughable enough, news came to light that the police really have been incentivising speeding ticket issuing after all. Perhaps now the police will turn their attention to preventing hippies climbing bridges? And where were they when this guy decided to go for a night drive!?

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At least now we have a way of avoiding the temptation of using a phone while driving and the potential for more fines. Here’s how to retrofit Apple CarPlay to your car (or perhaps Android Auto) and Mazda will also now offer its own CarPlay upgrade for older models. It only costs a few hundred dollars but you may be surprised to find out how much the option has netted for the Japanese car maker.

Apple made the car news again when Porsche announced it was partnering with the tech giant to slot more than 50-million songs into its imminent Taycan electric high-performance model. If the Taycan is a little out of your price range, perhaps something like this is more manageable – it gives an entirely different meaning to car play.

If you wanted even more great advice, here’s our guide to the best baby-friendly cars. Or perhaps one to take the dog somewhere really, really fast. Here are some Audi RS6 facts that you might not have learned from all the straightforward media coverage.

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There was more good news for one-tonne ute fans, with Volkswagen confirming a manual V6 Amarok for Australia, as well as a pair of high-end variants. Ford is now offering two engine options for the returning FX4, and we get our hands on an off-road camper trailer that’s as quick as the Amarok V6.

SUV enthusiasts have also been well catered for this week too with Skoda’s Kodiaq RS arriving on local turf, we pitch the ‘standard’ Kodiaq against the excellent Octavia wagon to see why the high-rider is so much more popular, and BMW confirmed that its SUV lines will be expanding.

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And of course, the last seven days have been punctuated with the steady flow of other reviews from our team of reviewers, including BMW’s 740Li, the Ford Ranger and Focus, and Nissan Qashqai.

Until next Friday, keep an eye on WhichCar – the best source of car information, entertainment and advice. There’s no question about that.