leather

Now we know why Mercedes released pictures of just the 'inside' of their new B-Class a few weeks ago. Despite liberal use of the word 'sport' in the press release, we can't imagine many buyers choosing a B-Class for its external appearance or street cred. No, this is a car that's all about the experience of travelling inside a luxurious and well-designed cabin - a characteristic it borrows from the much maligned R-Class.

Some days I feel like I must have gone to sleep and woken in a parallel universe - perhaps the popular TV series, Fringe, is a documentary on life - a fictional metaphor, rather than the science fantasy we first thought?

We live in an age where Aston Martin make a cutesy city car, Lotus focus more on fashion than engineering and Porsche plan a top-of-the-range electric powered supercar. If we'd painted this vision of the future as recently as 5 years ago, you'd have laughed hysterically and questioned our sanity and yet here we are at the end of 2010 describing exactly such a reality.