How to get your motoring fix at home: Websites and online

You know how sometimes a nagging ache is enough for you to tell yourself you won’t take feeling well for granted? This reminds me of that, but on a bigger scale: life’s too short to own boring cars. And Classic & Sports Car has loads of interesting ones. MP

The Samba

You might not have a project car in the garage that you can work on in times like these, so why not watch someone else finish theirs? This US-based forum, aimed at classic Volkswagen owners, allows readers to track the course of Beetle, Microbus, Buggy, Karmann Ghia and even vintage Porsche builds from start to finish. FP

Esports sim racing

With motor racing postponed for the foreseeable future, ‘real’ racers are going online to take on sim racers, and you can watch it live or streamed. Some good fun that could very well exceed your expectations. Search ‘The Race’ on YouTube for the best of it. MP

Car configurators

Shortly after Land Rover unveiled the new Defender, it put its online configurator for the model live. Within seconds, social media was flooded with ‘here’s one I made earlier’ creations. Sure, they’re ultimately there as buying tools, but configurators have become a source of entertainment by themselves. JA

Download car colouring books

Need to occupy kids? Well, get them colouring in some cars. Audi is offering a free-to-download colouring book (audi.us/33JasCr), while former Jaguar design chief Ian Callum’s new agency has put some designs on callumdesigns.com/downloads. Actually, both look much too fun to set aside for the kids… JA

Grace’s Guide

Upon his retirement from the world of industry, Andrew Tweedie set about shedding light on the fascinating early history of British industrialism by founding Grace’s Guide. The charity is run by volunteers with niche areas of knowledge, and its daily updated encyclopaedic website currently has some 139,000 articles and 225,000 images for you to enjoy, covering companies, people, events, machines and inventions. Autocar (founded 1895, doncha know) has proved one of the key sources of information. KC

VHS Rallies

An anonymous rally fan has dedicated this channel to rescuing footage gathering dust on video cassettes and bringing it into the digital world. And we should all be grateful. The result is a hotchpotch of action from jaw-dropping rally talent from yesteryear (loosely speaking the Colin McRae-and-Richard Burns era backwards), plus several amusing specials, from 1981 champion Ari Vatanen in a jacket and tie on Sport Friday to national rally hero Gwyndaf Evans being interviewed while driving a school bus. JH