Did anyone watch 5th gear, erm, last night now? Plato was a bit of a failure at The Race of Champions, especially against Vettel who utterley pasted him. Good old Coulthard was still keepin the British side up though, only been pipped into 2nd by Leob in the final.
As for the other bits, the new 7 series is apparently not as good as the old one, even though every part of it is better. Apparently it's not as good at cruising, as it has a smaller turbo'd motor now instead of the big old things they had before. That was the opinion of Tom "God I wish I was Clarkson" Ford though, so I'm assuming it was bollocks.
They had the new Megane on as well, I'm not sure about the looks yet, haven't seen one in the flesh yet. I'm sure it'll be like everything else new and everyone will hate the looks, then decided actually it's alright, a la the Bangle Beemers. They did commemt on how made it felt, with - "the plastics feeling like they'd been left to cure for the full amount of time". Hilarious I'm sure, on some level... This was actually something that shocked me about my 197 though to be fair, it felt a world away from any previous model Clio, like literally, Reliant to Rolls of a difference. I'm sure the Renault Sport one will be a cracker anyway.
Apparently, alongside the Nissan Quash Quish or whatever it's called, it's the safest car NCAP have ever tested. Well, I'm sure someone cares about that... Deep in the heart of "school run but don't want a 4x4 'cos they're evil" suburbia. The understeer control on the snow was pretty cool though, and the ESP. He was circling and going pretty fast, and the understeer control (brakes working to keep the wheels from understeering) was actually doing a impressive job, letting it actually turn in and keep going a lot quicker than I'd have expected. My 197 had that as well, but I never really tested it, certainly not on snow (I only drove it June and July heh), it was incredibly hard to get the ESP light to flash, you'd have to be doing some deliberate stupidity.
The only other thing was this new Audi something soft roader, they were comparing it to the Freelander, although the list price Audi they had stood at an impressive, including £12,000 of options, £48,000! A bit much me thinks, but then, why in hell were they comparing it to a Freelander? They even said the Audi was beautifully well made, it had a better engine range, it was solid and tough, they got as much stuff in as they did in the Freelander and it drove far better as well. So, the moral here was, a really expensive utility car, is better than a cheap one...