Fast forward: Orders accelerate for £125,000 electrical car

The credit crunch is hitting the average punter hard but an order book of more than 120 for the electrically powered Lightning car, which costs around £125,000, suggests some people still have cash to splash.

The backers of the "green" car, which was unveiled last year and does 0 to 60 in less than four seconds, said it was in talks with a number of Middle-Eastern investors to start production next year. Chris Dell, managing director of the Lightning Car Company, said he was in the "due diligence phase" with a potential investor.

"We haven't really marketed the car yet because we are still a while off production, but early interest is ahead of expectation," he said. "We're terribly British about this, so we don't want to promise something we cannot deliver. That's proved the death of so many companies in the past."