Steve Davies

Amidst all the glitzy sports car and hybrid-vehicle premieres at the LA Auto Show this week, you'd be forgiven for overlooking Subaru's latest 'concept' model which broke cover yesterday. Subaru have experienced more than their fair share of difficulties trying to evolve their most popular model, and from our experience of Subaru's recent concept vehicles we know there's a strong likelihood of this Impreza Design Concept becoming the fully-fledged production model.

After more than a decade of Elise-based production it’s easy to forget that Lotus was once known as a supercar maker, rather than purveyors of light-weight track-ready sports cars. Whilst many of us hold reservations about Lotus' New Era strategy, one point that cannot be argued against is that they needed a change of strategy.

We've known since last summer that Porsche would launch a more sporting variant of the ever-popular Cayman before the year-end, and whilst speculation was rife about its nomenclature it was never likely to be called a CS.

Instead Porsche have chosen to call it the Cayman R and if you're familiar with Porsche naming convention then you'll already realise that such a distinction is important. The Porsche alphabet reserves the letter R for very special sports cars in its range: R for responsive and refined – but most especially for racy. Porsche claims that the new Cayman R combines all these attributes without compromise.

World-record holder and gold medal winner Usain Bolt, experienced a special day out in Maranello yesterday, where he tested out a 458 Italia and 599 GTB Fiorano at Ferrari's Fiorano circuit.

Sometimes there's a reason why a niche is 'new' and perhaps other companies have considered and then dismissed it from their box of good ideas. Occasionally such innovations succeed, take Mercedes-Benz CLS, BMW's X6 or Smart's ForTwo, but sometimes those left-field ideas are supposed to remain just that - ideas.

Nissan disagrees however and has revealed the world’s first all-wheel drive crossover convertible in the run up to the LA Auto Show later this week

You have to admire the ambition of Dany Bahar and his team at Lotus, despite doubts over the scale and achievability of their New Era strategy, they've certainly raised the brand's profile during the two months since their Paris Motorshow bombshell.

Turning the small Norfolk car maker into a worthy Aston Martin, Ferrari and Porsche rival is on a par with Red Bull winning the F1 World Championship - an unlikely ambition and yet we've just witnessed the Austrian drinks company achieving just that.

With all the shenanigans surrounding the recent Paris Motor Show, you'd be forgiven for thinking that Metamorphosis is yet another new Lotus model ready the join the Esprit, Elan, Elite, Elise and Eterne. Fear not, for Metamorphosis is in fact a unique collaboration between Lotus and the award winning French artist Gérard Rancinan – due to be revealed on Friday (12th November) at an exclusive VIP event in Los Angeles.

EA (Electronic Arts) and KingSize USA are offering an advance-preview of the EA Need For Speed Hot Pursuit game launch in LA on Tuesday 16 November. The Philly based hip-hop duo Chiddy Bang will headline the event, which also features an all-night open bar.