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.

So the Government today has announced that they’re looking at a new set of ‘Road Safety Proposals’ in a bid to reduce the number of deaths on British roads every year. That sounds all well and good. I’m all for it, as long as it reduces road deaths. Good work.

Except they’re making a bloody hash of it already by starting in the wrong direction. Their main focus is a complete review of speed limits on the roads. 30mph limits could become 20mph, rural roads would be capped to 50mph, and so on.

To understand this, we need to clarify one thing: only a minority of road accidents (let alone road deaths) are caused by excessive speed. The majority of british drivers know that you cannot drive fast everywhere; there is a time and a place, and so the majority of us only drive fast when the risks are low, and only to speeds that are manageable should something unexpected occur.

So if it’s not speed that are causing these accidents, what is it? Well there’s a few. Those driving under the influence of drink or drugs (or both) is a serious factor. Other than that, it’s nothing more than good ol’ fashioned carelessness.

I’m a classic case in point. I’ll admit that i’m no angel. I’ll drive fast when and where the mood takes me, providing the conditions are right. I’ve done this since the day I got my licence. And yet i’ve only been in one accident. How fast was I going? I’d guess about 3mph maximum. It was at a roundabout, I saw a car in front move forward. I was checking right for traffic using the roundabout and had assumed that the driver in front moved forward to join the roundabout. So i let the car creep forward more and more until bang - right into the back of the Vectra in front.

I’ll put my hands up and admit I was a careless, blithering idiot. And I feel bad about it to this day. But it was ironic that out of all the times i’ve driven fast over the years, the time I actually have an accident was at a time when i’m concentrating the least.

And that’s a key point: When you drive at excessive speeds, you’re aware of the dangers and you concentrate more than you would at fairly low speeds. You look for hazards earlier. You’re focused entirely on the road ahead as well as the surrounding area. If you’re dithering about at, say, 40mph in a 60 zone (and there’s quite a few of you who do this), you’re almost bored. The risks are low, the journey is long, and your concentration begins to wander. And then one day a car pulls out from a junction in front of you and you ram into the side of it at 40mph, all because you just weren’t paying enough attention. And a side impact at 40mph is a lethal force; especially if the car that got hit was a small french hatchback that’s not really built for strength.

Of course, the government rarely speak officially of what causes accidents because they might upset the angry mothers and environmentalists who would have us believe that 90% of accidents are caused by excessive and dangerous speed. All the while traffic statistics are quietly released each year showing fewer and fewer accidents are caused by excessive speed.

I wouldn’t be very good at debating if I didn’t offer up an alternative solution for the government to use, would I? Then here goes:

Since we’ve already established that the main factors are carelessness and those unfit to drive, I have considered a few options that would directly tackle these issues. There’s no real way of tackling carelessness because nobody can be 100% focused 100% of the time. It’s just not realistic. However, you can test and retest things such as reaction speeds and general ability to drive. In countries such as Malaysia, drivers have to apply for a re-test in order to renew their driving licences periodically (in Malaysia’s case, it’s every five years). This makes sense, because your reaction speed and concentration levels when you’re 18 years old are going to be much better than when you’re 50 years old. it’s important that your ability to drive is still up to the legal standard, and yet those who are unfit to drive are never discovered until they either complain to a GP of a severe ailment (such as very poor eyesight) or when it’s too late and they cause a bad accident.

It’s also a good way of making sure drivers drive properly and don’t let bad habits get worse. ‘Coasting’ to junctions instead of actually driving to them, incorrect use of brakes, poor use of engine, poor use of signals and mirrors etc. If I had a penny for every time i’ve had a scare from a blithering idiot who couldn’t be bothered to use his indicators or mirrors, i’d make Donald Trump look like Donald Tramp.

Also despite being no angel myself, i’d be very much in favour of the government halving the number of points you’re allowed on your licence before you have to retake your test, providing they reduce the number of years the points stay on your licence from five years to three years. This not only punishes those who shows scant disregard for the law, but it also acts as a deterrant. The Police has already said many times that many drivers who acquire their first 3 points on their licence tend to receive a bit of a wake-up call and behave after that (myself included, I must admit), for fear of eventually losing their licence. If the point limit is reduced to six, that wake-up call will theoretically have twice the punch and more drivers will smarten up a bit.

As for those driving under influence: drugs is a difficult one because most drug-related issues are of the less-than-legal kind which no official authority has any apparent control over whatsoever. However, we can easily get many drink-drivers off the roads by having all pubs and other similar drinking venues operate a system that some nightclubs use - that is, you hand your car keys over to the cloakroom/front desk, and in return you get a voucher card of some kind, entitling you to hefty discounts on non-alcoholic beverages (which serves as the incentive to hand your keys over in the first place). Then when you go to collect your keys at the end of the night, the person in charge will assess if you’re fit to drive. Currently this assessment is based on appearance only, but they should really just breathalise everybody. If you’re unfit to drive, the venue keeps your keys for 24 hours until you’re in a fit enough state to drive, and in the meantime you’ll have to walk home. This means you’ll get fewer deaths by drink-driving because there’ll be fewer of them on the roads to begin with.

If this came into effect in every pub and club in Britain, the only drink-drivers left will be those who get drunk in their own home. It won’t remove the issue completely, but it’ll reduce the numbers significantly.

So let’s keep our speed limits at reasonable limits and focus more on actually dealing with the issues rather than using road deaths as a scapegoat to build more speed cameras to generate more revenue, thank you very much.

There has been a lot of talk among a number of manufacturers about making some new 4×4s - Ironic for an economic climate that sees the absolute death of them in terms of sales figures. Land Rover kicked things off with a new, eco-Land Rover (that will actually be badged as a Range Rover, for reasons unknown to us mere mortals). It’s called the Range Rover LHZ. It’s basically a Land Rover Discovery that’s shrunk in the wash, and whilst performance specs have yet to be confirmed, the party piece is this: it will only churn out a mere 150g/km of CO2. When you consider vehicles that produce 120g or less are tax exempt, that’s very, very good.

Personally, I was very impressed by this. It’s a huge leap for big SUVs that would spell the end for, well, every other competitor desperately trying to sell theirs. But it wasn’t met with entirely positive attitudes. Many people argued that you don’t go thinking about the environment if you’re set on buying a 4×4, and only avid petrolheads like us would even be aware that there’s a Range Rover that’s this economical anyway.

So, whilst ignoring these cries and building the new LHZ anyway, Range Rover have decided to build something very much ‘the other end of the spectrum’. But this time they’re not alone - BMW had just beaten them to the punch. So from Range Rover, we have a new Range Rover Sport. Doesn’t sound all that new? Ok. Fine. Have a 500bhp 5.0L V8 engine from the new Jaguar XKR.

Yep. A Range Rover with more power than quite a few Ferraris. That’s, er… scary. Wanna see?

503bhp, and 0-62mph in under six seconds. It will (and has) also lapped the famous Nurburgring circuit in Germany in under nine minutes, which isn’t something a big SUV should even consider attempting, let alone actually go out and do. However, Range Rover is also offering a much more frugal 3.0L V6 model that produces half the power but much better fuel economy. Expect to see these models in dealerships sometime in the summer.

However, as mentioned earlier BMW have beaten Range Rover to the punch (just - a few days earlier!) with two new monsters from their high performance ‘M’ division - the BMW X5M and X6M. As you probably guessed, they’ve taken their X5 and X6 SUVs and given them the ‘M’ treatment (that is: more power, performance suspension, more power, and a menacing facelift. And more power).

And if you thought 500bhp in a Range Rover was crazy, BMW have topped that. 550bhp in both the X5M and X6M. BMW took the 4.4 litre V8 from the original X6, gave it two big turbochargers, and put it back into the X6 (and the X5 for good measure).

They have Range Rover beaten on performance, too. That extra 50 horsepower really shows, with a 0-62 time of 4.7 seconds, which is just as fast as the BMW M3 Coupe. Top speed is also the same as the M3 - electronically limited to 155mph. However, you can opt for the M-division’s ‘Driver Package’ that derestricts the cars, allowing for a top speed of a fraction over 170mph. Note the rather large gunshot wound in BMW’s foot.

There’s a major compromise though. The 500bhp Range Rover is claiming to achieve a fuel economy of 30mpg, which is quite impressive. The BMWs? 20mpg. And if you have the cars derestricted, you’re going to be lucky to get anywhere near that figure, especially if you plan on putting the performance claims to the test.

The really big question that’s screaming itself to us is this: Why? This is a period where SUVs are becoming socially unacceptable and sales are at a record low. As the environmentalists are now earth-shatteringly noisy, more and more people care more about fuel economy than anything else these days.

So like I asked earlier - is it a “Never Say Die” attitude, or just don’t know when to quit?