Engine: 2.0-litre four-cylinder boxer diesel, turbocharged
Transmission: six-speed manual
Power: 147 PS at 3,700 rpm
Torque: 350 Nm between 1,600 and 2,400 rpm
Fuel consumption (combined cycle): 50.4 mpg
CO2 emissions: 146 g/km
Top speed: 120 mph
Acceleration (0-62 mph): 9.3 seconds
Price: Diesel from £24,295 (1.6 petrol from £21,295)

Nissan will begin producing an extra model at its Sunderland plant in 2014. The new car was announced during a visit by UK prime minister David Cameron to Nissan’s Japanese headquarters.

I like driving in my car, it's not quite a Jaguar. It certainly isn't. Cos it doesn't guzzle gas. Or petrol, as we have it in this alliteratively reticent country of ours. So what is this beast that isn't slurping down unleaded – which, incidentally, has just hit an all-time high of 137.44p per litre? That's right, it's an electric auto. And it's coming your way. At a pretty sedate pace, maybe, but it is coming... promise.

For the 59 judges from across Europe, six of them from the UK (including me), this was shaping up to be a close contest. Last Monday, the European Car of the Year (COTY) winner was to be revealed at the Geneva Motor Show for the first time. Could Volkswagen's Up mini-car beat Vauxhall's electric-petrol Ampera? Or would high technology rule, as it did in 2011 when the electric Nissan Leaf won?

The Geneva Motor Show, held on neutral territory in Switzerland in the spring, always produces a bumper crop of new models, and this year's is no exception.

Out of the shadows: Will a new model finally get the Lexus GS sports saloon noticed?

German car giant Volkswagen said today that it saw sales of more than eight million vehicles last year, putting it ahead of Japan's Toyota.

Can Toyota bounce back from a terrible year with its new GT?

The Japanese car maker Toyota aims to step up a gear in 2012, increasing sales by a fifth to a record 8.4 million vehicles.

Already disparaged as inferior to a crop that has barely begun its own journey to the same race, last season's novice chasers today vest their wounded pride in one who was himself damned with faint praise even when winning the RSA Chase. The success of Bostons Angel at Cheltenham last March was immediately dismissed as gutsy opportunism, the eventual protagonists having staggered up the hill as though abashed by their inferiority to rivals who had variously run below form, or failed to get round.

Daniel Carter will receive a World Cup winner's medal if his team-mates beat France in his absence on Sunday, retain his lucrative underwear ads and remain the most idolised Kiwi by roughly the width of the Tasman Sea.

My parents were... timid towards the world. They passed that on, very much.