Yamaha 6t4-43891-00-00 Brush on 2040-parts.com

Kamui Kobayashi canes the Caterham 620 R

After spending a year in the FIA World Endurance Championship, Japanese driver Kamui Kobayashi has returned to Formula One, nabbing a seat with Caterham. And while Sebastian Vettel is stuck hawking SUVs for Infiniti, part of Kobayashi's duties include flogging the manufacturer's latest evolution of Colin Chapman's bare-bodkin brainchild, the Seven 620R at Silverstone. We anxiously await the inevitable follow-up video where Kobayashi takes the legally-a-keicar Seven 160 for a blat in Tokyo traffic.

Alan Mulally spells out the future

Ford CEO Alan Mulally is famously on-message, handing out business-card-size versions of his business plan to all and sundry, including his “One Ford” mantra. “One Ford” covers a lot of ground, but it's shorthand for Ford becoming a single entity where the right hand knows what the left hand is doing. It's close kin to the concept of building global product platforms that spread costs for product development and parts over the greatest possible volume.

Smart fortwo Edition Limited Three

Mercedes has had stick in the past for playing with its ‘Toy Car’, the Smart. What was a quality maker like Mercedes doing involved with a car the size of the boot on an S Class Mercedes and named after a watch maker (the name stands for Swatch Mercedes Art)? Don’t get me wrong; there was always going to be a market for a car designed to park ‘nose-in’ in busy European streets, but its seemed like Mercedes was stretching itself too thin at a time when it was suffering a big loss in the reputation it had for building high-quality machinery.