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Dave, you are utterly mad, but fair play. Your love for the E9* is strong! Mega spec though, with that engine in an estate in the colour and with the options and mileage etc. The celebrity connection is kinda cool too.

Limited to 600 and a UK-only model, so pretty rare.

Sadly, that seems to be the case with almost everything now. Steering feel is becoming an extremely rare commodity!

100% The speed difference between all of them is negligible, so that wouldn't bother me. The Audi is nice, but the Golf is meant to be a bit sharper. I really don't like the interior or the exterior of the A-Class and the BMW hurts my eyes, so Golf all the way out of those four.

Would still have the Golf tbh

The proportions look ridiculous - it's so short! Should be hilarious with Meg running gear though.

Nice to see this still progressing.

I think I would look at other options first. If you already have a torsen diff, any benefits from a plate diff (which is the best for track use) are going to be limited compared to fitting one to a car with an open diff. I'd make sure the springs/dampers/geo are all perfected first, then see...

Agreed. A sporty Clio is better than old fast Fords in every objective way, but the feeling of the steering wheel of a chipped RS Turbo squirming in your hands as it tries to put its power down is something to be savoured. Rarely the best cars in class, but great fun all the same.

It's demand though ultimately. Old Fords fetch big money because so many people want them. You can advertise a Clio for £50k if you want but, if no one is willing to spend £50k on one, you'll never sell it. The market decides prices, not any of us.

Is that the one where the concept look retro and kind of cool, but the production version looks really tragic?

And yet, OEMs continue to invest in hydrogen, so there must be some benefits. It mainly seems to be for vehicles that require a longer range. Some seem to be earmarking it for use in commercial stuff. It's going to be interesting to see how battery technology develops, but it does seem to rely...

Yeah I think they were definitely ill-prepared in some ways, but we have seen a sudden shift in government positions that now seem to be forcing them to go down the BEV route, even though questions still exist about its long-term viability. Hydrogen does have potential, especially as it has the...

Oh I totally get the reasons for it but, given the whole point of EVs is to be more sustainable, it still seems ridiculous. The carbon footprint of every car would be much improved if we could improve manufacturing efficiency, so having two design teams, two manufacturing facilities, two lots of...

This is a huge issue with EVs in my view. Scrapping existing cars and replacing them with new ones is pretty energy intensive. Also, I recently read something about how we are going to start mining the sea bed for cobalt in order to satisfy demand for battery production. Doing that without...

One of the things that bugs me at the moment is the fact that OEMs are making bespoke platforms for their EVs. While I understand that the architecture can be quite different in an EV, it seems very wasteful. ICE cars are going to be here for a long time yet, especially in hybrid form, so why...

Yeah, I think people say that spots still have some advantage for distance. Would like to try them out. It took you 35 years to buy a Golf, you're not allowed to make jokes.

I do still love an old style lamp pod, but the LED bars do seem to very much the trend currently. I guess it's much easier to knock up some alloy brackets than go to the trouble of sculpting a pod, so I can see why people do it. My lamp pod was surprisingly heavy too. I'd like to give the bars...

Not sure how it looks like it's been anywhere near Halfords, it's got some aftermarket wheels and some LED light bars on it... The lights are designed to be simple. They need to be quick to fit/remove, rather than be the last word in attractive design. They wouldn't be fitted most of the time...

Came across this one on Instagram recently - i30 N rally car:

That's lovely. Can't be many of those in Canada!

Speedlines would be essential on a 200 for me, or aftermarket. The standard wheels hurt my eyes.

Ford have a section of track at Lommel that is supposed to simulate British roads apparently. I think it's a combination of things in reality. Stylists demanding big wheels, the difficulty of finding a set-up for all markets, packaging, customer perception of "sporty". It goes on and on...

I don't know if I like the sound of "out-harding" people... It's definitely a factor though, without a doubt. The big wheel thing plays a part too. We've gone from having big, chunky sidewalls 20 years ago, to having rubber band tyres on most stuff now.

I do wonder if it's what the market demands. Even a lot of M-Sport BMWs and S-Line Audis feel stupidly firm for what are, essentially, cooking model cars. People associate hard ride with high performance, so I think it is intentional to some extent. That and the fact that roads in the UK are...

It does seem a bit of a thing with Fords. When I had my Golf R, a friend had a MK3 Focus ST and the ride in the Focus wasn't quite so well resolved. It was ok most of the time, but when cruising on dual carriageways, it did feel a little fidgety compared to the Golf. You could say the same about...

Looks is the endlessly debatable topic I guess. I've never been a huge 1-Series fan, so I'm probably not the best person to ask. That being said, my friend has an 07 130I M-Sport and I do have a bit of a soft spot for that for some reason. The leg room is comically bad though.

Just a shame about the styling of the BMW, although that is very subjective of course. The practicalities don't help it either I guess, as it has always been behind the FWD-based stuff in terms of interior space etc.

I've never spent any time in one on the road unfortunately, so can't really comment on its road manners, only a brief taste on track. A lot of buyers seem to be ok with a relatively firm ride these days and Focus RS sales exceeded expectations from what I've been told, so I guess it wasn't an...

I think that's perhaps being a bit unfair on the Focus in a way. It is a hard-riding car (so was the ST actually), but I think that was very deliberate. It was never a car designed for the ultimate lap-time, hence them never bothering with 'ring times etc. The priority was fun rather than...