Autocar - First for car news and reviews

It might not sound as thrilling as tearing around a circuit in a brand new sports car, but there really are few things more enthralling in a motoring journo’s life than visiting a car factory.

The cutting-edge technology, the sophisticated processes, the thoroughness and coordination of the work, and the sheer attention-to-detail involved with screwing cars together will simply blow your mind.

Ford’s Dagenham diesel centre, which knocks out close to a million engines a year for the Blue Oval’s many and various models, is just such a place. Ford of Britain opened up this engine factory to a few of us yesterday, in advance of the London motor show next week, where it will be ramming home its improving environmental credentials.

As our manufacturing industry disappears down the throne, inflation rises, credit crunches and our leaders gaze like stunned rabbits into the headlights of approaching recession, there is at least some crumb of comfort that can be derived from knowing there are still some things we do better than anywhere else.

There is no tennis tournament like Wimbledon, no cricketing venue like Lords and no motoring event anywhere in the world quite like the Goodwood Festival of Speed.

If you wait for long enough a press release will arrive to tell you  just about everything.

Take this morning’s announcement from BCA auctions that it will shortly be flogging off a Jaguar XJ saloon that’s currently the property of actor Herbert Lom.

I've just spent the weekend in a Mitsubishi Lancer 1.8 GS3 with continuously variable transmission. I wish I hadn't.

The car's positive features - a large boot, low kerbweight and good chassis - do little to compensate for the horrendous drivetrain. The engine/gearbox pairing is the worst that I've found in any car I've tested.

It would be wrong of me not to record the passing of one of the most accomplished of F1 photo-journalists with the death last week of the much-respected Bernard Cahier at the age of 81.

Cahier's photo archive now looks like a social history of the sport in which he worked assiduously across four decades from 1952.

There's no doubting that the new TVR is a snappy-looking vehicle.

The TVR Car Club has enthusiastically posted shots and details of the Sagaris 2. The 'production-ready' prototype has some minor body mods, a reworked interior and the company's Speed Six engine.