Keyser Manufacturing Steel Suspension Tube 100t421223c on 2040-parts.com

State of Scion: What's next for the original alternative-rock car brand

“This is gonna be awesome!” the spiky-haired guy in the Scion video screams, epitomizing in five words the enthusiasm the youth-oriented brand has tried to stand for over its seven-year history. But now there's competition. It's not enough to make quirky cars and market them to the alt-rock generation.

McLaren X-1 - rebodied MP4-12C supercar (2012)

Sometimes, the best just isn’t good enough. That’s why a wealthy anonymous car collector – garage already full of McLaren F1, McLaren Mercedes SLR and MP4-12C, and goodness knows how many fabulous non-McLarens – thought he’d like to produce his very own one-off supercar. The new McLaren X-1, which makes its debut at The Quail, part of the Pebble Beach weekend, is the result.

CAR tech: who's to blame for your car's terrible fuel economy?

In early 2013 Audi lost a case brought by the Advertising Standard Agency (ASA) because of ‘misleading’ fuel economy figures used in an advert, after a customer complained they couldn’t get anywhere near the 68mpg quoted. The court case once more exposes the yawning gap between officially sanctioned mpg figures and those experienced by owners. A recent study by the Independent Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) looked at cars sold in the UK and Europe, and discovered the difference between official mpg figures and real-world driving had grown from 8% in 2001 to a barely believable 21% in 2011.