Russians build three-car fidget spinner By News from Elsewhere...

...as found by BBC Monitoring Published duration 21 June 2017

image copyright Garage 54 image caption Three Lada Samaras and a lot of smoke in a stunt that would have made Top Gear proud

A group of Russian motor enthusiasts have tried to make a car-based version of the fidget spinner, and very nearly succeeded in their attempts to make it spin.

In a stunt that would not look out of place on BBC's Top Gear programme, the Novosibirsk-based Garage 54 team welded together the front ends of three Lada Samara cars to see if they could replicate the action of this year's cult toy, Russia's Sputnik news website reports.

But instead of getting the three-headed monster to spin on the spot, all they could manage was a series of ever-increasing circles as the motors worked against themselves.

"You saw it yourself. It looks like a real spinner. We didn't get the crazy spinning, as the cars started to break down," one of the team said. "But still we managed to drive three cars at once."

Previous experiments by the Garage 54 group, who have nearly 700,000 subscribers on YouTube following their escapades, include a "CatDog" where they welded two cars together. The spinner, they say, was the logical conclusion to this by adding a third.

But the car was short-lived, the Garage 54 video on YouTube - now viewed over 600,000 times - shows the "Russian spinner" being torn apart with the help of a tow-rope attached to an SUV.

image copyright Garage 54 image caption Nobody's quite sure which is the front end

image copyright Garage 54 image caption Obligatory shot of an angle grinder

image copyright Garage 54 image caption The inevitable end

image copyright AFP image caption If the entire fidget spinner craze has passed you by, there's what they look like

Next story: Britons held in Finland after popping over to Russia for beer

Reporting by Alistair Coleman, Maria Kiseleva

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