@Bento: It's a Nissan Micra circa 2003

If it was in the Daily Mail it was almost certainly made-up/grossly exaggerated and they would no doubt be claiming that the parking attendants who wrote out the tickets were Polish immigrants who were sending the proceeds back to their families in Gdansk

could they be combined with spikes that come out of the hubs?

I have one! It's the previous generation but living in central London its diminutive size and capacious interior make it an ideal inner-city car if you have more than one friend (which is all the Smart is good for) and the removable rear seats mean that I can turn it into a small van when the need arises (which it…

@superveloce: this is simply not true, yes the Fiat groups European sales have improved in the past few years but they were coming up from a very low base after sales of the Stilo and the previous generation Punto had collapsed. The are clawing back market share but they are far from "the only manufacturer to…

@superveloce: it is precisely because the 159 tries to hard to be a BMW 3 series (and fails) that I'd pass on it. It looks great (especially the wagon) but simply isn't special enough to drive

@racebeer: the Kingswood had nothing incommon, beyond a passing family resemblance, with the mighty Kingswood. It was only later in the 70s that the Opel Commodore morphed onto a Holden, which sold alongside the (larger) Kingswood

@j6r: that would be cool but given the costs involved a derivative of the XJ/XK aluminium platform is more likely to end up under some future Maserati

I'm pretty sure my father (who was a farmer in New Zealand) bought one of those because of that ad

@Scroggzilla: now that the Tata deal has finally been sealed there is potential for component sharing between Jaguar and Alfa/Maserati because Ratan Tata is on Fiat's board and Sergio Marchionne, Fiat's chief executive, told the Financial Times that "I would be more than pleased to collaborate with Tata in terms of…

@FreeMan: even Alfa's management have now admitted that the 159/Brera are too heavy and don't drive well enough

Honestly you don't want the current 159, it's overweight, over engineered and really not as good as it should be to take on the BMW 3 series et al. What you really want is the next generation of Alfas that might (whisper it) have RWD and actually be truly competitive again

@Number_Six: no, they will come to you!

so much to speculate about so little time, will Tata's close relationship with Fiat (he's on their board don't ya know) mean that Alfas will be sold in the US through Jaguar dealers? Does this mean that Alfa's new big saloon, the 159, will share components with the new Jag XF, and what about Maserati sharing Jag's…

What we have here gentlemen is a pre-emptive strike against Ford of Australia's new Falcon, the FPV's (Ford Performance Vehicles, in other words Ford's HSV) version's new V8-powered GT is expected to output 315kW of power, which would have been more powerful than the 307kW HSVs.

when I was a student a friend of mine had a multipla the interior of which alway smelled like cat pee so that gets my vote especially because if you squint it looks a bit like a 4-wheeled Easter egg

maybe they could have done it up in New York cab livery like the Ford Transit Connect

The other one's better

So you've now got 2 versions of the Holden Commodore, what about the other two? G8 GT Sportwagon anyone? And a new generation GTO based on the recently displayed Coupe 60 concept? Well let's just hope the plummeting USD doesn't make them all too expensive