Edward Beaumont

Shocking news: an industry that spent decades looking the other way is now told to “change”. Took a Russell Brand conviction to get a minister to notice the obvious.

Japanese-market imports with AMG badges, sold by a dealer who wants you to bid fast. Expect the odometers to lie.

Old BMW survives 2,500 miles. Shocking. Pass the smelling salts.

Revenue up, shares up, and not a single number to check it against.

Twenty-two thousand miles in twenty years. Nobody drove it, they just stared at it in the garage like a family heirloom nobody dares to start.

Tesla built a minimalist cabin, now everyone photocopies it and calls it innovation.

Volkswagen built the Golf into the default car of an entire continent, then discovered the electric version is apparently a luxury item. Ten years of “the future is electric” and the grand plan turns out to be a spreadsheet that says no. Here in Britain we already watched the Golf get bought as the sensible choice by people who did the sums properly.

Lincoln v Birmingham at half twelve on a Saturday, so the fans get to queue for pies before breakfast has even settled. Brilliant. Nothing says football like a kick-off timed for the convenience of the telly people and the sad little hangover brigade. Mark my words, somebody will get booked for a dive in the first ten minutes and we’ll all pretend it’s the most important sporting event since Agincourt.

Oh, marvellous. A 2016 Focus RS, barely run in, with 34,000 miles and a manual gearbox, and I’m supposed to feel reassured. Here’s how it ends: some enthusiast with a wallet full of optimism bids it past anything sane, the seller pockets the cash, and the new owner discovers the clutch has been slipping since the day it left the dealer. Then the insurance quote arrives and finishes the job.

Nobody has ever driven a £300,000 Ferrari for 137 miles. It’s not a car, it’s a very loud garage ornament with a suspiciously low odometer.

Twenty-five thousand a year and still nobody can say what it’s for.

Toyota making $1.7bn selling petrol engines while the planet burns. Brilliant.

Six-speed manual, 61,000 miles, and some mods nobody asked for. It’ll sell to a man in Ohio who swears he’ll keep it stock, then fit a catback and a wing in a fortnight.

Missing estimates by 23 cents and still calling it “resilient.” Classic.

Land plots, the classic “safe asset” every subscriber gets sold right before the prices fall.

Last major upgrade of the season, and it’s Austin, a track where the car’s floor and sidepods matter less than the tyres and the braking zones. So what exactly did the redesigned floor buy them over the Austin-spec setup they already had? Leclerc topping FP1 tells us nothing: FP1 is fuel, runs and rubbish, every team plays it close to the chest.

108 warnings, not one spare engineer.

So the brave new customer is a script with a wallet. Splendid. I want one answer this piece avoids: when an agent gets manipulated into a fraudulent order, who eats the loss — the human it claims to represent, the shop, or the outfit that sold the model? Until that’s settled, all this advice is a note about whose lawyers to call first.

Over here this reads like science fiction. A state court slaps Meta with $25bn while our regulators publish a concerned letter, launch a consultation, then fine someone the price of a used hatchback. Hilarious. Silicon Valley must be terrified — of our timetables. New Mexico has done more in one verdict than Whitehall manages in a decade.

I’m stunned by this totally foreseeable chaos.