Prize-winning: Cage picked up a Best Actor Oscar for his moving performance of a drunk trying to kill himself through the bottle in Leaving Las Vegas.

"This is nirvana for us space guys," one of the scientists involved in the Mars programme said at the weekend. Not, I think, because we are near to solving the mysteries of the red planet. No, really it's because he gets to drive the ultimate boy's toy - the Sojourner Rover. Chick magnets don't come much finer than this vehicle, which is driven by a virtual reality headset by a human on earth. What more could a boy ask for? I'm only surprised it doesn't have the modest kind of number plate once seen on a white Lamborghini - "WOW1".

If you think you've missed the boat when it comes to the Italian market, don't despair, writes William Raynor

Nuccio Bertone, one of the great figures of the car world and the doyen of Italian design, has died aged 82.

If you're cool, you roller-skate. Quaddies are in, in-liners are out. Olivia Stewart-Liberty explains

Clive James's new novel perfectly captures the complexity of Bombay, says Tim McGirk

Take away the hat, the Lamborghini and the media profile and you're left with a new role for Nicholas Lyndhurst in a sitcom about an amiable Trustafarian nitwit on a mission to explain the obvious to a weary world. Sid James would play the landlord who rolls his eyeballs downstairs in the parlour. Posh mum would be Penelope Keith, who wore a kaftan and slept with Status Quo in the Sixties. And Reg Varney would take the part of local councillor on the make. Things all start to go wrong one morning when Jay Kay (Lyndhurst) wakes up and remembers he has to make another album for the Sony Corporation and, uh-oh, his bedside notebook of social and ecological iniquities has gone missing. Oh well, nothing for it but to make an album about the metaphysics of having a good time. And that's when the fun really starts...

Sweep swoons and a senor woos Soo as stuffed toy discovers sex

As sales shoppers swarm over stores like a plague of cash-happy locusts, it seems they cannot wait for Christmas to come again. Christmas cards are among the more surprising bargains stripped from this year's display of tempting reductions at Liberty in London.

This is the most sought-after wing mirror in the world. It is made by Citroen, and is available from Citroen dealers for pounds 72.55. They cannot sell you a car to go with it, because the model for which it was made, the CX, went out of producti on in 1989. But you can buy a car with these wing mirrors: they are fitted to the McLaren F1 supercar, which costs pounds 634,500. If you want something cheaper, you'll find them on the Jaguar XJ220, the Aston Martin Vantage, the Lotus Esprit, the AC Ace , and the TVR Griffith and Chimaera.

The $22bn bid for the car-maker may prove hard to finance and be badly timed. William Kay in London and David Usborne in New York explain why

A professional car crime gang, which succeeded in stealing a Lamborghini Countach from a company specialising in storing exclusive cars, has been smashed by police. The 25th anniversary model Lamborghini was stolen from Store A Car in north Crawley last month.

SAM TORRANCE, the Graham Gooch of golf, is still using the long handle to good effect and is on course here to kick- start his Ryder Cup career. Not everyone, at such an early stage, wants to talk about the biennial showstopper between Europe and the United States, but Torrance is not among them. He has played - not all that successfully it has to be said - in the last seven Cup matches and is determined to make it eight.

TRAFFIC jams at the border, non- stop queues in the newsagents and front-page headlines. The drama has seized the whole country. Germany is in the grip of lottery fever, and tonight it may go collectively delirious.