Around the tracks: John Mayer’s Defender ad and Peugeot’s playful tweet

When we’re not creating it ourselves, the CarAdvice team spends a lot of time finding and consuming motoring content from all over the world.

Here’s a handful of the photos, articles, videos or social media posts that most caught our eye last week. Some of them are brand new, others have been online for a while.

Enjoy them – just not too much, okay?

This week, we covered the reveal of the production version of Lucid Motors' all-electric sedan, the Lucid Air.

The US-made car will likely act as a direct rival to Tesla's Model S when it lands in the fourth quarter of 2021 – although it's not yet clear whether the car will make it to Australia.

Until then, however, you can keep yourself occupied by playing with Lucid's impressive online configurator.

Set against the spectacular backdrop of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, the configurator allows you to open up the bonnet and doors, stow the infotainment screen in the car's interior and even turn the headlights on and off.

Few things bring more instant joy than when an auto executive embraces a more tongue-in-cheek approach to PR.

This week, we got especially excited when Peugeot's brand boss shared one of our stories with a cheeky offer for competitor Volkswagen.

After we reported on the upcoming Volkswagen ID.6 being spied, camouflaged as a Peugeot 5008, Peugeot's Jean-Philippe Imparato seized the opportunity for a little playful publicity.

He retweeted the story with the following caption: "Hey VW Group, how about we lend you a real Peugeot 5008 if you'd like to try one that much?"

Well played, sir. Well played.

This week, we wrote about Mercedes-Benz partnering with Off-White design guru Virgil Abloh to create something called the Project Geländewagen – essentially a very futuristic re-interpretation of the G-Class.

The prototype is meant to be an insight into what luxury might look like 100 years and the finished product is quirky to say the least.

One thing we're a huge fan of, however, is the technicolour steering wheel, which looks like a Formula One car had a baby with a Nintendo controller.

The same steering wheel is set to appear on Mercedes' upcoming Project One hypercar – except that version is mostly black.

We reckon this version is much more fun...

What do you do when you're a successful auto brand looking to attract a new kind of buyer with your latest model?

You hire a celebrity to do the work for you, of course. Land Rover did just that, enlisting crooner John Mayer to do an elaborate ad for its new Defender.

As far as celebrity endorsements go, this one is pretty well done. Simply titled 'John Mayer goes outside', it sees the singer and a film crew head off road in the wilds of California.

Mayer is a Defender fan – he's owned a slate-blue Defender 90 for more than a decade – even bringing his own car along to the shoot for comparison's sake.

There have been many things postponed because of this year's COVID-19 pandemic, and one such victim was the new Fast and Furious movie.

Originally scheduled for this year, the release was pushed out to 2021 because, well, coronavirus.

But it seems the ninth film might not be as similar to its predecessors as we'd have thought, with a cast member recently all but confirming at least some of the film will take place in space.

Yes, you read that correctly. According to the AV Club, the space speculation started when an interviewer asked star Ludacris whether the franchise would ever go to space, to which he responded "you said something very right" before backtracking.

Now, fellow F&F star Michelle Rodriguez has done an interview in which she basically confirms at least one cast member will go off-roading – into the galaxy.

"Oh no way! How did you guys find that out?" Rodriguez said when the interviewers asked. "Nobody was supposed to know that!"

You can watch the moment below.

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