If you lined up all the petrolheads in the world, and asked them that if they could have any car in the world, what would it be, at least 50% of them would reply “McLaren F1″. Built in the early ’90s, it was the supercar to end all supercars. The technology used to build it was at least 10 years ahead of time. There was only one front seat, located centrally, to give the driver perfect peripheral vision whilst driving. And two seats in the back so you could terrify your friends or family. The engine was the heart of it. Despite the early ’90s technology, the engine produced so much power that the engine bay was lined with solid gold, as gold is the best reflector of heat. No car before or since has been able to match the F1, let alone beat it. However, because of this it was far too expensive. £1,000,000 a pop. And if you want one now, it’ll cost you at least double that as so few were made, so many were wrecked by people with more money than brains, and it’s fame and reputation precedes it.

This is why this is such a landmark moment. The first all new McLaren. Forget the SLR; that was literally a Mercedes SL65 tuned up by McLaren. This new car is theirs and theirs alone, built from ground up by McLaren themselves. The McLaren MP4 12C.

Firstly just to get it out of the way, no, it’s not quite as fast as the F1 was (but close enough!). However it is just as groundbreaking. McLaren has explained that this car is the first of many from their new retail-focused company and they wanted it to symbolise what the new McLaren company stands for: performance and technology. And boy does it have those in spades. Let’s start with the technology.

The chassis is the heart of the car. McLaren has said that the technology to build it simply didn’t exist, even in this day an age. So they spent years creating it. It’s the only car in the world to incorporate the ’survival shell’ used in Formula 1 cars. Before now it wasn’t possible as the cockpit in a road car is too big for a survival shell to work (which works using the same physics that prevent an egg from being crushed lengthways). But McLaren has bridged that problem, creating an entire spaceframe chassis made from just a single piece of carbon fibre, for maximum strength. It’s designed so the bodywork will crumple around the cabin in a crash, without intruding past the shell and causing significant injury to the occupants. This is a lot of geek speak and you’re very bored, I know, but it’s a world’s first, and could well be implemented into other high performance sports cars in the future.

The groundbreaking technology doesn’t stop there either. This is the ‘greenest’ car ever made. No really, i’m serious. Not only does it produce the least CO2 emissions of any supercar, but it also produces less CO2/km per horsepower of any car on the market at all. Yep, that means that Hybrid-engined Toyota Prius you’ve been smugly driving is a planet-killing Range Rover compared to this. Greenpeace activists everywhere are lost for words. Although I should point out that the statistic is the lowest CO2/km per horsepower. And this car has just over 600bhp. But shhh!

The car is also styled following function in all aspects. The bodywork is extremely aerodynamically efficient. So efficient in fact that it doesn’t even have any door handles, as that spoils the efficiency. To get in and out, you slide your hand under a touch-sensitive panel on the door (look at the first picture and you’ll see where I mean). And to stop people stealing your car, the panel will only activate if your wireless keycard is in range (so if you lose it, you’re stuffed), so thieves can’t break in. The wingmirrors are almost like antennae to give optimum aerodynamic efficiency. Most of the back bumper is one big radiator grille to allow the engine (mounted in the middle of the car for - you guessed it - efficiency) to get rid of hot air, whilst two huge intake gills flank the sides of the car elegantly, sucking in cool air into the engine as you drive along.

The interior is not what you’d expect. You were expecting lots of colour and vibrance and “look at me!” stuff, weren’t you? No. That’s just not McLaren’s style. It’s attractive enough and very stylish, but in the cleanest and most professional way possible. Not sure about the signature red tick on the steering wheel though. Someone might mistake the car for a giant Nike trainer.

And lastly, performance? Well the engine defies belief. It’s much smaller than you’d expect - a 3.8L twin-turbo V8. But it produces 600bhp and a meaty 443lb/ft of torque. But what makes this car so fast is that nearly all of the total power is available from just 2,000rpm, rather than 5 or 6 thousand like most supercars, making it alarmingly fast. The speed is also helped by the car’s weight (or rather, lack of it). It’ll weigh just under 1,400kg. To give you an idea, a Peugeot 206 GTi weighs just under 1,100kg.

The actual performance figures aren’t out yet, but they’ve coyly hinted at 0-60mph in around 3 seconds and a top speed of 200mph+. I doubt the official figures will stray too far from that either. It’s a McLaren after all.

Best bit? Price. It’s not going to be a million quid like the F1. Far from it. Just £150,000. The same as a bog-standard Ferrari F430. And if this price tag stays, Ferrari will have a lot to worry about. They don’t have a single car under £200,000 that is anywhere near as good as this.

We’ve been waiting at least two years for this one ever since it’s concept design. It’s Peugeot’s attempt at putting themselves back on the map and if looks are anything to go by, this may well do the trick. The Peugeot RCZ.

Peugeot has a bit of a sob story to tell. Years ago Peugeots were respected, and their 205 GTi was the car that started it off, being one of the best (and first) ‘Hot Hatchbacks’ in the world, and even today you’ll find them mentioned in “top 10 best handling cars” on numerous sites on the internet. Then we had years of dreariness. The 206 was their next ‘good car’ (I should know - I had one!) and was so good that it was used in the World Rally Championships for many, many years. And actually, when it came to handling, nearly all of Peugeot’s hatchbacks were very good cars to drive, but that wasn’t enough to generate sales as people were still put off by the whole ‘cheapness’ of the brand. Nothing felt special, everything felt budget.

Peugeot realised that the only way to improve the brand’s reputation was to aim more up-market, but still be cheaper than the upmarket brands. Thus began the designing of the RCZ. Everything about it is batting way above Peugeot’s range. Even the performance, which is the one thing Peugeot’s normally very good at. So, to prove it, here’s a checklist of all the different aspects of any good car.

Looks? Well just look at it. And it’s not just aesthetics either. Everything is built from high quality materials. High quality leather interior. High quality bodywork. And look at those wheels. When have you ever seen anything like those on any factory-spec Peugeot? Shame it’s still got Peugeot’s mouthy front grille though. Looks like a botox injection gone horribly wrong.

Performance? Well no prizes for guessing the engines. A 1.6L turbo petrol engine for now, and a 2.0L turbo diesel on it’s way, as per usual. The petrol engine will produce 200bhp, giving a 0-60 time of 7.6 seconds. However, the front suspension is double-wishbone, which in layman’s terms is the same suspension setup you get on a Ferrari 360. So 60mph in 7 or 8 seconds may not be as quick as you thought, but at least it’ll do 60mph everywhere.

Fuel Economy? Yep. That torquey petrol engine’s party trick is that it’ll produce 200bhp and decent performance, but also return 39mpg. That’s a LOT for a performance car. Better still, if you’re not really after the performance and you opt for the diesel engine, that’ll use fuel at over 50 miles per gallon. Again, impressive stuff.

Interior? Well as said it’s all high quality leather interior. Or so we’re told. The concept designs showed a fantastic interior though. Let’s hope it stays. However, Peugeot have confirmed the rear seats will actually fold up, giving a very large boot. So it may be a two-door sports coupe, but with this you can have your cake and eat it.

No word on price yet, but expect it to be priced like a Peugeot. Their current lineup of cars range between £8000 to £15,000, so expect this to start around £18,000. Although given Peugeot have announced that they’ll be producing this car “in small numbers”, so it’s likely to be a bit more than that.

The RCZ will go on sale in the UK in spring next year.

The Mini. British? German? Either way the Mini is an iconic car that’s been with us since the original design 50 years ago, and it has always been the definitive ’small car’. The Mini has changed over the years, getting fatter (and uglier, perhaps), incorporated more doors and practicality (Mini Clubman), and there’s even a Mini Convertible. But in the 50 years of Mini, none of the three companies that made the Mini (Austin, BMW, and of course Mini themselves) have never ever built a ‘Mini Coupe’. A small sports car of some kind. All they’ve done so far is tuned up the Mini Cooper to combine its legendary handling capabilities with an impressive amount of power, and called it the JCW (John Cooper Works). So if you wanted a fast Mini, that was your only option.

Until now. Mini has just revealed its ‘Mini Coupe Concept’. As the name suggests, it’s a pre-production concept at the moment, designed to celebrate Mini’s 50th anniversary, but here’s hoping it makes it to production.

The first thing you’ll have noticed is the roof, which kind of looks like a baseball cap worn backwards. Well that’s because it’s supposed to look like that. Apparently the chief designer Gert Hildebrand claims he got the inspiration for the roof when he saw his teenage son wearing a cap backwards. There are some things you perhaps should keep to yourself, Gert. Doesn’t do you any favours!

Much of the familiar Mini design is featured here. The bug-eyed headlights, the air scoop in the bonnet, the rear lights, the front grille… quite a lot of it is very much ‘Mini Cooper’. However, remember how the Mini Cooper is widely regarded as one of the best ‘Driver’s Cars’ money can buy? Yeah, well this is set to be even better. It’s 5cm shorter and lower overall than the Cooper JCW, and will share the same 208bhp 1.6L turbo engine as the JCW. It’s also around 100kg lighter than the JCW thanks to only being a two-seater instead of four, and features a rear spoiler on the roof to help keep the arse pinned to the road at speed. The windscreen is also more slanted for more aerodynamic improvements.

So lower centre of gravity, lighter, better aerodynamics, and with the same surprising power as the JCW. No official performance figures yet, but it’s expected to hit 60mph in around six seconds, and a top speed of around 140mph, perhaps more.

Rivals? Well again, there’s no word on whether or not it’ll even reach production yet, let alone prices (though the Germans insist it will, and Mini usually are true to their word when it comes to concept designs), but you’re looking at anywhere between the Peugeot RCZ (more on that later) and the Audi TT.

Good news is if they build it, you have about two years to save up for it. It won’t reach Britain until at least 2011.

It’s a glorious summer. Record temperatures, months of blue skies, England thrashing the Aussies at cricket, and inevitably in the UK - swarms of drop-top convertibles.

Britain buys more convertibles than France, Spain and Italy COMBINED, and the vast majority of convertible sales are done during the summer. So Italy’s latest offering couldn’t come at a better time - The Maserati GranCabrio.

Headline figures? Basically it’s a Maserati GT with a soft top roof. That means it gets the same 4.7L V8 with the same 433bhp. However, it’ll also come with far more charm than the GT. Rumours of supermodels in the back seats being sold as optional extras are entirely unfounded.

The car will be quick - 0-60mph in 5.5 seconds, top speed around 180mph. Which is all pointless really, because this isn’t some drop-top supercar trying to rival the Ferrari Scuderia convertible, or a Murcielago LP640. Which is just as well, because despite having a delicately exquisite soft top roof, the car still needs structural reinforcements, so it weighs the best part of two tonnes. This is for the middle-aged sugar daddy that goes to a West End Theatre with two trophy girlfriends at either side. A boulevard cruiser. Something that’ll rarely exceed 30mph.

Which begs the question: Why give it a racy, Italian V8? Alfa Romeo had the right idea with their 8C Competizione. Not particularly brilliant to drive, but an absolutely gorgeous thing to behold.

Prices are expected to start around £90,000. Or if you wait about 5 years you’ll find one on Autotrader for at least half that, given you can get second hand Maserati GTs for £15,000 now.

I haven’t updated this site for a while. I apologise profusely for any avid reader (if this site has any? Maybe? Maybe not…) for the lack of updates.

As I mentioned in my previous blog, I bought a new (ish) car. A very rare 1987 Mazda RX-7 FC. It’s quite fast and handles brilliantly. Being an older car, the handling has a lot of feel. There’s no traction control or any electronic moderation from the ECU. The car does what you tell it to do, end of story. And being rear wheel drive, lightweight, low slung and with a fair amount of power, you can ask quite a lot from it and it’ll happily respond.

However, as with all classic sports cars, there are one or two issues. Firstly, it’s 22 years old. It’s more than capable of delivering the goods it has always been capable of, but at the cost of some TLC and maintenance. Something will break every now and then. It drinks quite a lot of oil. You have to keep it in top condition, else it’s age will catch up with it. A bit like humans really. You can either age like Mr Miyagi or Hulk Hogan, or you can age by going senile and unable to move without a zimmer frame.

The second problem is the lack of creature comforts, and this is where my blog’s topic comes in. Modern VS Classic. Modern sports cars have had to respond to ever-increasing consumer demands. In the past if a car had full leather interior, or a CD player, it was something special. Now we want those as standard, and will happily pay extra for things like Climate Control, a premium sound system with a 6 disk CD changer, Sat Nav, Cruise Control, automatic headlights, automatic wipers, and even heated sports seats for the winter. Porsche’s 911 sports car for example went from having sports car essentials only to becoming something of a Gin Palace. In fact, modern day Porsche has a reputation for quality built mostly by all the things their cars come with these days, more so than for their exceptional performance.

My car on the other hand is a typical 1980’s sports car. The seats are somewhere between cloth and suede. There’s no air con, let alone climate control. There’s not even power steering. It does have a CD player and sat nav, but only because the previous owner and I had them installed as aftermarket premium products. As a result this car ONLY does fast.

However, both generations are a compromise. My car will hit 60mph in 6 seconds (albeit thanks to some minor enhancements). That’s quick by today’s standards, let alone for the 1980’s. In fact in the 70’s that was what you’d expect from cars like the Lamborghini Miura, and today any car faster than that is considered to be a high performance car. Even some powerful Mercs fail to reach that. And it’s all because of weight. In the 1980’s 200bhp was quite a lot of power. You had a fast car if you had 200bhp. Nowadays you’ll see that in a decent car like a BMW. In fact there are Mercs that have more power than that but are slower cars than my RX-7 thanks to being built like a portable lounge.

So which is best? Well if it’s performance you want, buy classic. Even the mid-range cars back then (Porsche 944, Mazda RX-7, Nissan 300zx etc) are fast cars, let alone if you pick up an old 911, BMW M5, Jaguar XJS etc. However the best all-rounders are the new ones. New technology means that cars are better off with the same amount of power. They have better fuel economy for starters. You usually get six gears instead of a maximum of five. You get more luxuries as standard. But as for performance, you either have the same as a 1980’s sports car, or you pay a lot more money for something a bit quicker.

And when you consider you can get a good 1980’s sports car for no more than a few grand these days, it really is swings and roundabouts.

I don’t normally do personal blogs on this site, mainly because I fancy myself as being some sort of small-time motoring journalist than just a petrolhead with a blog. But I thought i’d talk about this to see if I can’t encourage like-minded petrolheads to do what i’ve just done.

I’m 21 years old and I love cars. LOVE them. But I don’t work on them. I don’t have a shed, and my mechanical knowledge only stretches to as far as knowing how to do basic maintenance and service on cars. I’ve always had an interest in how cars work though, but never had the opportunity to learn until now.

I’ve just bought myself a very rare, classic car. A dusky blue 1987 Mazda RX-7 FC. Absolutely gorgeous little beauty. It was designed to compete with Porsche’s 924-S in the ’80s, and whilst it was ‘only’ equal to it in the performance stakes, it was sexier, being longer, lower, and wider. Anyway, mine came with an aftermarket twin sports exhaust, which sounds aggressive and chavvy, but there are times when you just fall in love with it. Especially when a chav in a kitted-up Saxo pulls up next to you and revs up the kitchen blender he calls an engine. Anyway, 0-60mph in under 8 seconds, top speed around 140mph, and despite the engine only being a 1.3L, it’s a rotary engine, which produces the same sort of power you’d get from a 2.4L piston engine. The fact that it’s a 1.3L and has no cylinders or pistons, and is mounted right back in the chassis just in front of the dashboard, means it’s also a very light car. It’s bloody quick and corners like a mosquito.

All for £1000 including tax and MOT. Not bad for something in immaculate condition AND is as rare as it is. There’s not many left in the UK.

My point is this: after getting the car and using it for every day use, it’s 22 years of age has caught up with it. The passenger side window won’t open, for example. So i’ve bought myself a Haynes manual. These are fully comprehensive manuals that you can buy for almost any car nowadays, and they teach you how to maintain, repair, or even tune up pretty much anything and everything in your car. All the manuals are based on a complete strip-down and rebuild of the car. It even teaches you how to repair things that most mechanics wouldn’t even consider ‘repairing’, such as a dodgy gearbox. So I’ve been reading through that and just doing that has given me a fair amount of mechanical knowledge. All I need is a decent tool kit. And given the one or two niggly faults occuring in the car at the moment, it’ll help me repair things that would otherwise be an expensive trip to the local mechanic.

That, and I found out I can up the power from 150bhp to a massive 300bhp just by poking around in the engine, and there’s much, much more to be had out of it than that if I was willing to add a turbo kit and strengthen the gearbox. No wonder RX-7s are seen as Gods in the tuning world.

It’s a big deal for me because i’m not one of those guys that lives in a shed. I’m not one to get my hands dirty. And yet armed with this book and a decent toolkit I can repair pretty much anything in the car if (or rather, when) it goes wrong. And you don’t need lots of prior mechanical knowledge, or be able to understand long, complicated words. The manual is very easy to follow and everything is indexed. All you need is the confidence to get your hands dirty and to not be scared of taking your car apart.

I’d encourage others to do the same to be honest, because it made me realise that anyone can fix stuff in their car if they had some guidance (i.e. a Haynes manual) and the guts to take their car apart. You can learn so much from just one book, and ultimately you’ll begin to love your car more than you already do, because it’ll become very much ‘yours’, not just some car you drove off a forecourt.

Although i’ve got the added bonus of having a rare, desirable classic. You probably won’t get the same satisfaction with an old Peugeot!

This is the first glimpse of a new concept from Aston Martin. They’re calling it the ‘Cygnet’.

I so wish this was April 1st.

Unfortunately, we’re not kidding and neither are they. The Cygnet may well be a concept car, but there are plans to put it into production by next year. All of Aston Martin’s cars have had benchmarker rivals against which they competed. Porsche 911, Ferrari 360, Maserati GT, etc. This one is based around the Toyota iQ.

You might laugh, but it’s actually very sensible and a very difficult competitor for Aston Martin. As such, Aston Martin are doing things properly. That means no, it won’t come with their 4.0L V8, and forget about a 6.0L V12. Expect a 1.3L 4-cylinder engine. And whilst the expected price for this is obviously going to be a lot more than a Toyota iQ (which retails at about £10k), it’s very reasonable for a car with Aston Martin’s badge. About £20k. Double the iQ, but a hundred times more prestigious.

The Cygnet will have all the usual Aston Martin trimmings. You get their signature front grille, you get the bonnet vents from the DBS, AM’s alloy wheels, and even the Pirelli tyres custom made specially for Aston Martins. And of course, expect the interior to be very ‘Aston Martin’, loaded with plush leather and generally very luxurious.

So a small, nippy, economical Aston Martin for the same price as a VW Golf. There’s got to be a catch, surely? Well er, yes. If you think this is going to be a cheap ticket into Aston Martin ownership, think again - this will only be on sale to existing Aston Martin customers; the idea being that this is a small, economical city runabout so that Aston Martin owners don’t have to squeeze through City Centre in their big, showy, gas guzzling supercars.

This is not the first time this has happened. About a year ago Ferrari too made a hatchback based on the Fiat 500. It got the Maranello paint job, cream leather interior, etc etc, but was only available as a courtesy car for existing Ferrari customers to use whilst their real Ferrari was being repaired or serviced. What’s next? A Porsche based on a Smart ForTwo? A Corvette based on a Chevrolet Matiz?

I hope so. Because the good thing about this is one day we’ll see these exclusive cars on sale in an Autotrader mag.

A short history lesson: The VW Golf GTi is a legend. The MkII model - along with Peugeot’s 205 GTi - introduced to the world the concept of a ‘Hot Hatch’ in the late 80’s and early 90’s. A small, nimble car with enough performance to humiliate the £100k supercars on real-life country roads. Ford soon followed suit with various versions of Escorts and Sierra Cosworths, and so on. At some point during that time VW also created the ‘Scirocco’, which despite being fairly popular never really had the same kind of fame or reputation as the Golf GTi.

All of a sudden, along came a new VW Scirocco - the first for nearly 20 years. In their excitement, VW ‘accidentally’ made it noticeably better than the Mk5 Golf GTi, a car still revered as being the definitive ‘Hot Hatch’. Frankly, being ‘accidentally’ better than a Golf GTi is like ‘accidentally’ finding a cure for cancer, or ‘accidentally’ achieving world peace. It’s a huge deal. Anyway, VW realised they just kicked themselves in the nuts, and quickly designed the new Mk6 Golf and Golf GTi, deliberately making it even better than the new Scirocco so that VW could keep their flagship car. And ‘flagship model’ translates in human speak to ‘best of the breed’.

So, the new VW Scirocco R - a Scirocco bred by motorsport (a 24 hour Le Man’s-style racing series no less), with as much power as a Porsche Cayman and a pricetag matching the new Ford Focus RS. Once again VW has kicked themselves in the nadgers. In fact this car is so fast that you’ll never guess how they officially revealed the car. At a motor show? A press conference? No. Via a 24 hour racing series at the famous Nurburgring circuit in Germany, highlighting this car’s awesome performance and motorsport pedigree. So after all that effort to make a new VW Golf relatively prematurely (the Mk5 is only a few years old, mind!), VW have just ruined all that by making a much faster Scirocco. VW’s only hope is that the much-rumoured successor to the Golf R32 is even better. Personally I hope not. I like the Scirocco too much.

The new car sports a more aggressive bodykit than the standard car, with angular new side-skirts and racey new bumpers, sexing up an already gorgeous car. Think of it as changing it from Hugh Grant to Vin Diesel, if you know what I mean. The ‘Donington’ alloys on the standard car have been scrapped for new ‘Talladega’ alloys, which I think is a shame as the Donington alloys were very attractive and very similar to the alloys on the McLaren SLR; a £300,000 vehicle.

There are also changes inside, too. The standard sciroccos had a dashboard that was very typically ‘Golf’ish, and the party pieces were those gorgeous leather seats based on those in the old 1980’s Scirocco (and indeed many other classic cars). This time they’ve gone for something much more modern and racey.

Those blue dials? They glow red when they hit the redline. A luminous ‘R’ logo sits at the base of each gauge. A revised steering wheel with an ‘R’ logo on the base, and a graphically enhanced computer system in the centre console. Even the seats (not pictured, sadly) are sportier and better looking than the old ones. This car does its best to tell you that this is a sporty, feisty, lemme-at-’em racer.

Power goes up from 200bhp to 261bhp, giving a 0-60mph time of 6.4 seconds and a top speed electronically limited at 155mph. Remove the limiter and you’re probably looking at 165-170mph. That’s Porsche Boxster acceleration, and Porsche Cayman territory if you don’t mind losing your driving licence. But actually it’s target is much more humble than Porsche. This is gunning for the Ford Focus RS, which has slightly more power, is a little faster to 60mph and has the same top speed. But the Focus also has a LOT more handling problems - all that power at the front wheels means lots of wheelspin and jerky steering caused by ‘torque steer’. This has none of that, giving you more confidence in both the car’s abilities and your own, resulting in performance easily matching the Focus RS.

Of course, everything I just said is all words. This car won’t actually hit dealerships until much later this year, going on 2010, so we won’t know precisely how good it is until then. But the silver lining is it gives our bank managers plenty of warning!

Last one to get onto the reserve list is a rotten egg…

I’ve been following this feud since it began at the Nurburgring last year. Nissan’s new GTR beat Porsche’s 911 Turbo’s lap time, which is hugely impressive for any car to do, let alone a Nissan. Porsche acted like brats, frankly. They accused Nissan of running the GTR on race-spec tyres, and even went as far as buying a GTR themselves and trying to achieve a similar lap time. They claimed to be 50 seconds off, and basically accused Nissan of lying. Nissan responded with photographs, video evidence and so on supporting their case, as well as offering Porsche special driving lessons for the GTR. That last one couldn’t have gone down well!

Anyway, as you can imagine the two companies haven’t exactly seen eye-to-eye since, and Nissan has since gone as far as to declare Porsche their main rival. This became apparent when Nissan unveiled their successor to the 350Z, the 370Z. At the press launch, Nissan also put a Porsche Cayman on the stand and said “This is the car we set out to beat when we designed and built the 370Z”.

As an aside, this rivalry is dangerous for both manufacturers. It’s dangerous for Porsche because they’re a very up-market brand that is comparitively quite small. Nissan on the other hand is one of the biggest car firms in the world, producing what we’d consider to be common, everyday vehicles. Furthermore Nissan’s home country (Japan) is the spiritual home of car modifications, tune-ups and generally making a normal car eat supercars for breakfast. Porsche could be biting off more than they can chew, against a company with a far bigger budget and more tuning experience.

Conversely, Porsche’s cars are famous for their performance. A Porsche’s balance of handling and power is deemed by many to be unmatched by any other car. Add to the fact that none of their cars are built on a budget, and you’ve got cars that will not only thrash anything cheaper than them, but will all too often eat cars with much higher retail prices. Nissan could appear to be a bit like that short, cocky little bugger you find in a pub; always trying to pick fights with the bigger lads because he feels he has something to prove.

However Nissan has been trying to go more up-market ever since they made their new line of 4×4s, and would inevitably end up trespassing on Porsche territory. This fight was therefore inevitable. So round 2: 370Z VS Cayman

The first thing you notice with the new 370Z is that they’re really trying hard and have paid a lot of attention to detail. The roof line and other styling cues are based on their GTR, which is a good thing since that car was aerodynamically designed for maximum stability. Also, gone are the swathes of cheap plastic interiors. The 370Z sports hand-stitched leather, alcantara door trim, aluminium trim here and there and supportive leather sport seats, all in a bid to match Porsche in more than just the performance stakes.You could be forgiven for forgetting you’re in a Japanese car.

As for performance? Well I personally can’t talk about it as i’ve yet to drive either cars, yet many sources say that whilst the base-model Cayman is £10k more, it’s worth that much more if not more still when you take both cars out onto a winding backroad. The Cayman gives you the signature Porsche handling, sticking to the road on corners you wouldn’t expect it to. Meanwhile the Nissan’s more aggressive. The handling is impressive, but not in Porsche territory just yet. It’s a successor to the 350Z in the sense that it handles very similar, only without sticking the tail out quite as much. It grips more and drifts less, but it’s not perfect and it doesn’t beat the Porsche. It’s got a ways to go.

Also there’s the issue of badging. A Porsche badge brings with it a sense of respect from all petrolheads. Love them or hate them, all petrolheads acknowledge Porsches to be good, fast, up-market cars. The same can’t be said for Nissan. So in order for Nissan to erase the appeal of the badge, they can’t price their car at just £10k lower than the Cayman. Many people will happily pay the extra £10k for the reassurance of a brilliant, widely respected car with a quality and feel that’s rarely matched, rather than risk going for a Nissan just because a few journalists and Nissan bosses say it’s just as good. They need to come in at about £15k less. If the Cayman is £40,000, sell the 370Z for £25k.

The problem is this: In terms of performance, Nissan has already made some iconic cars. The Nissan Skyline GTR for example. Being upmarket therefore isn’t a case of putting your prices up, it’s about putting the quality up. If Nissan wants to beat Porsche, they need to keep their prices at Nissan prices, but raise their overall quality to Porsche standards. You beat a famous and respected brand by beating better than them, not by being equal, or aiming to be.

Give it a few years. Nissan’s prices tend to drop much faster than Porsche’s. Come back in two, maybe three years time and we’ll have this fight again.

The government has announced today that it will pay you £2000 to scrap your car in exchange for a brand new one, providing your car is 10 years old or older. Yay - that must mean we’ll see more new cars on the road and this will boost everybody’s standard of living, right? Well er, no. There’s a major problem with this.

First of all it’s clear that not one person involved with the planning and design of this scheme knew a single thing about the motoring world in the UK. The government see this as a really attractive and brilliant thing for us unwashed public because we’d love nothing better than a brand new car and have the government essentially pay us to buy one. It also appears that we can buy newer, better cars that won’t cost us very much money.

But anyone who has ever bought a second hand car and really looked hard for one will know this is actually quite a clever farce.

Let me put it to you this way - i’ve been browsing car markets for a while now and i’m currently looking at a low mileage, perfect condition convertible C4 Corvette for £6000. Meanwhile Mr Alistair Darling is waving a £2000 incentive in front of me, so I have the option of spending £6k plus the extra £2k on a new car, meaning I have a budget of £8k to spend on a new car. All very nice.

But what new cars can you get for £8k? Well you’re looking at Peugeots. And the good Peugeots cost more than £8k. Nissan Micra is another option. Ford Ka maybe? And then there are cheapo electric boxes such as… shiver… the G-Wiz. And that really is getting desperate.

So basically Peugeot, Nissan Micra, or Ford Ka. It’s either one of those, or flick the V’s to Mr Darling and buy a Corvette instead. Now you see my point.

Of course the silver lining in all this is that small, economical, base-model hatchbacks are getting quite cheap now. Even the basic of the base-models for the new Alfa Romeo MiTo is a fraction under £9k, and Alfa Romeos are really nice cars in terms of quality, style and design. So if you’re interested in a cheap, economical runabout you’ll be jumping at this new idea.

I think it’ll split the country down the middle in terms of the car industry. Petrolheads like me will keep our older cars and buy them at bargain prices and own them brimming with pride. Those who don’t care much for cars will love this new initiative and Mr Darling will be seen as a hero.

Well, at least it’ll get rid of the Nissan Sunnys and Ford Orions.

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