In spite of the title, Castrol EDGE’s “Clone Rivals” series of webisodes featuring an Aston Martin Vulcan and a Koenigsegg Agera One:1 do not feature any illegal or immoral genetic tampering. The videos do not involve any duplication of the supercars, no physical doppelgangers of drivers Christoffer Nygaard and Darren Turner are conjured out of sketchy scientific facilities. There are no sheep, no Orphans Black, and certainly no dinosaurs.
Instead, the “clone rival” in question is a tortured way of saying that the Koenigsegg and Aston Martin in question will be racing against the clock. For the videos, Castrol purportedly had Turner and Nygaard zoom around Spain’s Ascari race track in their respective cars on a simulator, took their best lap times, then had them race around the track for real, with the position of their virtual “clones” projected on each car’s windshield. The difference, of course, being that the Aston Martin and the Koenigsegg are supposedly running Castrol EDGE. Both the Agera One:1 and the Vulcan appear to fall behind their “clones”…until they find the extra strength only Castrol EDGE can bring, and they leap to victory.
We pepper that last paragraph with all those qualifiers because the videos seem so contrived, it’s hard to take them at face value. You mean to tell me both of these very different supercars happened to catch their virtual doubles at the exact same point around Ascari? Both drivers happened to go all “VTEC, yo” on the throttle in the same moment of furious rage at falling behind? Suuuuure.
You know what, though? Who cares. Sure, it’s a blatant gimmick to promote Castrol’s EDGE synthetic oil. Sure, it’s occasionally melodramatic to the point of being funny. But it’s also an excuse to watch two of the newest, most ferocious supercars in the world tear around a track in cinema-quality HD. We can think of a lot of worse things an oil company could do.