Steve Davies

What exactly does this say about Toyota marketing strategy for its hybrid poster-child? Was a cow not good enough? Or perhaps on the scale of animal flatulence, the sheep is the harder target to beat and therefore warrants a poster in celebration of such an achievement?

Doesn't time just fly by? Well perhaps not, but the link is relevant as we consider the Spirit of Ecstasy - also known as The Flying Lady, which celebrates its 100th anniversary in 2011.

We think this campaign might just be one step too far for the world's largest car maker. For the red-blooded males amongst us who own a Toyota Prius (are there any?) then fear not, this is a Toyota USA initiative which looks like it might have been commissioned from their Amish regional offices..

With less than a day to go until Christmas and many people in the midst of travelling to be with family and friends, you could be forgiven for questioning the timing of Mercedes announcement about its revised C-Class range. But far from being a brush-under-the-carpet piece of news, there are significant changes coming for the C-Class that should make it even more popular with buyers.

Spanish sports car and racing specialist, GTA Spano, has been pounding around the Ricardo Tormo Circuit in nearby Valencia developing future models to succeed its popular 769 bhp V10 GTA Spano. Spanish sports car and racing specialist, GTA Spano, has been pounding around the Ricardo Tormo Circuit in nearby Valencia developing future models to succeed its popular 769 bhp V10 GTA Spano.

Peugeot’s EX1 Concept car has already set several records in France during September and has continued its record breaking streak in China. The Chinese city of Chengdu was the location Peugeot chose to improve its world acceleration record set for an alternative fuel vehicle.

Now this is more like the kind of result we'd like to see from the hit BBC series, The Apprentice, we can just picture Lord Sugar setting the challenge - "your task is to build a muscle car from a Mercedes-Benz B-Class..."

Time for a bit of pre-Christmas trivia to brighten up the holiday season. From time-to-time certain news items land in our inbox that make us sit up and take notice; Jaguar's wonderful C-X75 for example was the star of the Paris Auto Salon, whilst Porsche made every car enthusiast believe in the future with its Concept 918 Spyder.