Motoring opinion

Looking at the Chevrolet Volt and Saab 9-X Air concept that have dominated CAR's homepage over the past seven days, I couldn’t help but play the ‘what if’ game. Instead of the catalogue of...

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the great German-American architect and designer, was famously known for his ‘less is more’ style. His minimalist philosophy works for me. But sometimes less is not...

I assume that because you are reading this website you have a pretty good overall knowledge of cars. Undoubtedly you can spot a B Engineering Edonis from 200 paces and identify a Castagna Aznom with...

At the end of last week CAR spoke to some senior car industry analysts at the big investment banks. What they told us, privately, was shocking. They said that while they could once be pretty certain...

So Porsche has extended its controlling stake in Volkswagen. Today Stuttgart confirmed it now holds 35.14 percent of the voting rights in the huge sprawling Volkswagen group – up from 31 percent. The...

'There’s something about Sebastian [Vettel],' said Gerhard Berger prior to the start of the year. 'Everything about Formula 1 seems to come so easily to him; it’s as if he was born to be here.' On the...

It’s absolutely bucketing down here. For those of you who can remember last year’s Japanese Grand Prix, the weather’s like it was there: rivers are flowing across the track, mechanics are sweeping...

‘Premium’ car sales seem to be collapsing, or so the August UK sales figures suggest. Aston Martin down 26 percent year-to-date, Bentley down 17 percent, Lexus down 23 percent, Porsche down 26...

Should Lewis lose the World Championship by four points, he will look back at this race and think ‘what if’? What if Nicolas Deschaux, Surinder Thatthi and Yves Bacquelaine – the three FIA  stewards...

The magic of Spa is its incongruousness in modern F1. New tracks – Sepang, Istanbul, Shanghai and Bahrain – begin life on Hermann Tilke’s computer screen, but Spa was created by nature. The track...

I need your help. Inspired by CAR’s latest adventures trekking through Morocco, over the Alps and into Russia, I think it’s about time I had a go myself. But while I have a location I also have little...

Cars are great but good car journeys are even better. Cars have given us unmatched mobility, broadening our minds as they broaden our horizons. After the Sumerian invention of the wheeled chariot, the...

'Timbuktu.' 'You want to go where?' 'Timbuktu. In a Discovery.' 'Does it exist – I thought it was a myth?' 'The Discovery?' 'No, Timbuktu.' 'Er, yes? I mean, I think so. But wouldn’t it be fun to find...

Best adventure drives special Why it's just more than A to B By Gavin Green What drives us By Greg Fountain

Where should CAR go next? We know most of the roads round Europe like the back of our hands, we’ve crossed the Pond at least a dozen times this year and Africa is almost old hat now. Heading east is...

Valencia laid on a great welcome for the Formula 1 circus over the weekend and it deserved a more exciting inaugural race than this weekend’s uneventful European Grand Prix. It was the most boring...

The track resembled Oxford Street on the last Saturday before Christmas. Drivers, engineers, sponsors and journalists tripped over each other yesterday while walking the new Valencia street circuit,...

Last week I did something I never thought I would do. I purchased a Volvo. A dirty great big V70 estate – a D5 SE if you like that sort of detail. Our little Skoda Fabia estate was battling to handle...

The Ferrari F40 wasn't the first supercar I ever drove. It was in fact the third. But before you shed a tear for me, you should know the F40 was the worst supercar I’ve ever driven. Back in June 2007...

Forget the Batmobile, the Mazda Furai is one of the wildest looking cars of the moment. And we've just had one of the wildest rides of our life in this astonishing race car-cum-concept. You can watch...

With oil at $130 a barrel, petrol at £1.20 a litre, our roads traffic clogged, our police force ever more vigilant against ‘speeding’ and eco green taking over from Italian racing red as motoring’s...

They were the most impressive ten seconds of Felipe Massa’s Formula 1 career. His reaction to the lights going out was sublime; he then fed the perfect number of Ferrari horses through his rear wheels...

The Hungaroring is the slowest permanent circuit on the Formula 1 calendar. The quicker cars lap at an average speed of ‘just’ 122mph, which makes slow-speed grip the main focus of attention for...

My 21-month-old son already has an unhealthy obsession with all things four-wheeled: tractors and cars, lorries and trolleys. You name it, he loves it. Pushing them around the floor. Up table legs.

It’s funny how speed works. In a car designed and engineered for serious pace, anything up to 150mph feels pretty normal. Driving to Waitrose normal. Calm and controlled, as you lap the Millbrook bowl...

One of the daft upshots of our current marketing-fuelled obsession with ‘brands’ is that, to borrow a booze industry phrase, the name on the bottle is now frequently more important than the drink...

At the recent Goodwood Festival of Speed, I found myself wondering around the Cartier ‘Style et Luxe’ display. More specifically, I was in the James Bond section, gazing at 007’s finest. And there,...

Fate has never had a clumsier moment than when it decided that I should be the first journalist in the world to drive the €1m Lamborghini Reventon. At the time it was the only finished example in...

No messing around in the is-it-isn’t-it-a-supercar middle ground for me. When it came to popping my supercar cherry, I went straight for the Ferrari Enzo. You can’t argue with an Enzo. It’s rear-wheel...

After a Peugeot 107 for his son, Gavin Green is lining up a family car for himself. On the list? Everything from a BMW 5-series to a Citroen C4 Picasso… Car journalist seeks buying advice. Regular...

Ahead of this weekend’s World Touring Car Championship races at Brands Hatch, Honda WTCC driver and two–time BTCC champion James Thompson sat down with CAR Online and talked us through a lap of the...

CAR Online ran a competition to pick a squad of reader reporters to cover the London motor show alongside CAR's professionals – and four readers joined us on press day on Tuesday 22 July 2008. We will...

I was interested to hear last night that British prime minister Gordon Brown will make a surprise appearance today to open the London motor show 2008. It's supposed to be top-secret, but my well...

Great drivers give you options. Michael Schumacher’s four-stop strategy en route to victory at Magny Cours in 2004 was one such example, and Lewis Hamilton’s dominant display at Hockenheim yesterday...

The new Hockenheim is a bit poxy compared to its super-fast predecessor, but you won’t find a better racing circuit anywhere in the world. The long straights and slow corners make overtaking possible,...

A French journalist from Auto Plus magazine has been arrested for possessing photos of the next-generation Renault Scenic. It raises fears for us writers beavering away trying to spill the beans on...