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So what does it mean to European drivers if Toyota and Subaru are starting to get closer and will soon start colaborating to build cars together?

Optimists might well reckon the Toyota connection will do something about Subaru’s generally woeful design and fuel economy – long since the two major weaknesses for car’s wearing the Subaru badge. Which would be a good thing, surely?

I love the way the Audi R8 drives, but unless I’m looking at it head on, I just don’t like the way it looks. It’s way too fussy for me and too jarring with angles and panels all over the place.  

I was sharing this opinion with a senior motor industry bloke the other day and his response was fascinating. He reckoned I should forget about what Audi’s 911-rival looks like, it’s mere existence proves that the company is leaving arch-rival BMW for dead at the moment.

This is a chap who’s opinion counts for a lot. He’s run three major car companies and also spent a good chunk of his career working for BMW itself. And his perspective is that Munich has lost its direction – and that has allowed Audi to move in and plug the gaps.

Fascinating news from Italy that Tata is to take an ownership stake in styling house Pininfarina – rescuing one of the best-known names in automotive design from the financial crisis that threatened to engulf it.

Pininfarina has designed the bulk of Ferrari’s recent range, and currently builds the C70 and Focus C+C for Ford. And, like Britain’s beleaguered high-street banks, it’s raising money by issuing new shares.

We don’t know how much of a stake Tata will take – but the Pininfarina family will see its current 55 per cent holding (and the control that brings) diluted to about 30 per cent. Tata is likely to share the extra investment with French company Bollore, a specialist maker of electric cars.

Those who knew Geoff Polites, the universally admired Jaguar-Land Rover chief executive who died over the weekend, knew perfectly well that he was ill. But we were mostly able to put it out of their minds because his demeanour, workload and optimistic outlook on life made him seem anything but a man with major health concerns.

He was still working at “full steam”, as he would have put it, until a few weeks ago, but died in his native Australia a few days after the birth of a grandchild he had been hoping to see.

To be honest, most of us here had clean forgotten all about the plans to bring the MG TF back from the dead. 

That’s odd, because it was less than a year ago that I drove up to Longbridge to see Nanjing roll a handful of the new TF2s off the still-idle production line. It was meant to be an indication that the MG TF project was well on the way. Now the withdrawal of a major supplier means that production at Longbridge seems to be off the cards.

I’ve got pretty used to talking to excited automotive engineers enthusing about a model that they’ve been working on. But I’ve rarely come across such a jubilant bunch as the Chevrolet Volt team that I was talking to all day yesterday. 

The Volt’s special, they say. Not just for the technological advances it will showcase when we get to see it in 2010. But it’s got a special status inside GM. According to the project leader Frank Weber: ‘it’s our biggest opportunity and our biggest risk’ but he had a big smile on his face when he was telling that so I guess he’s even excited about the pressure he’s under to deliver.