I grew up in a part of the country on the south coast known as the Costa Geriatrica, due to the large elderly population living there. Driving around was an education believe me – drivers would indicate left and then turn right, pull out of a junction without looking, or just stop in the middle of the road because they’d spotted a friend they wanted to chat to. For a long time I thought it Read more…

I’d never heard the term ‘acoustician’ before until an email arrived from Audi the other day. It doesn’t take much brainwork though to figure out that it has something to do with sound – acoustics, get it? – and apparently the German car manufacturer has a team of ‘acousticians’ working on a very specific problem. Electric vehicles, we are told, are the thing of the future. Well, not the future, now in fact, and Audi Read more…

Last weekend wasn’t a good one if you were Australian. First of all the rugby team, reckoned to be the second best in the world behind New Zealand’s All Blacks, got hammered at Twickenham by a resurgent England, and then the nation’s Formula One hopes were dashed as championship contender Mark Webber had a lack-lustre weekend at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix and never looked in contention. It was pretty bad if you were Spanish Read more…

It was late Saturday evening when an unexpected press release dropped into my inbox. It had been sent by the McLaren Mercedes Formula One team and the subject line read: “Incident involving Jenson Button in Sao Paulo.” I knew it couldn’t be anything to do with the qualifying session which had taken place because I’d already received details of that. Instead it was about an alarming incident which had occurred as Button was leaving the Read more…

The Morgan car company, famous for its exclusive hand-built sports cars, celebrated its centenary last year, and to commemorate the event the company is heading back to its roots. When it was founded in 1909, Morgan made three-wheeled cars – two at the front and one at the back – powered by a motorcycle engine. The reasoning behind this was that three-wheelers, or cyclecars, were classified as motorbikes and thus avoided car tax. The Morgan Read more…

I don’t like arrogance. I don’t like show-offs or people who boast about how good they are at something or what they’re going to do that’s better than what anyone else can achieve. So I didn’t pay a lot of attention to Ferrari driver Fernando Alonso back in July when, just after finishing in the British Grand Prix and lying 47 points adrift of the then championship leader Lewis Hamilton, he announced that he was Read more…