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This big, seven-seat, four wheel-drive beast is the Fiat Freemont, which we in the UK will not be getting the chance to buy. In reality, it is a modified version of the Dodge Journey, which gets its own Fiat-designed dashboard and a modified nose and tail.

Last week, while driving the 2012 Fiat Punto, I also had a quick go in the Freemont on the roads around Fiat Auto’s Balocco test track. It’s no Ford S-Max, that’s for certain. But it is a capacious seven seater and I can see why it would appeal to people living in snowy central Europe.

It’s been a week since the blizzards hit and I was just wondering how we all got on?

I would like to think that we have learnt something about how to behave in sub-zero conditions over the last few years, but in my neck of the wintry woods its been quite alarming on occasions.

Is it the last ‘enth of design genius that’s missing from Scuderia nowadays? Are the drivers, even the great Fernando himself, not quite eloquent enough at providing the feedback required to develop a car and move it forwards at the same pace as The Other Two Teams?

Or is it something else that’s holding Ferrari back, something unseen yet so complicated that any one outside the laboratory has no chance whatsoever of understanding what it may be? And if so, any guesses as to how such an intangible absent quality might be rectified? (Ferrari fans, feel free to defend your marque passionately, and let us in on any secrets you may be aware of at the same time).

Yesterday I flew to Barcelona to drive the new three-cylinder, 1.0 litre Ford Focus, and discovered a truly remarkable car. You can read my first impressions of it here.

In our game, you usually know what to expect from a new model (a Lamborghini will always be intimidating, look amazing and be dominated by its awesome engine; a Mazda will always have light controls, do everything unobtrusively and be a great ownership proposition).

As you can read in the mag this week and watch on video by following this link, we’re rather impressed with the all-new Porsche 911. In just about every department, it improves upon a predecessor that wasn’t exactly wracked with problems in the first place.

It’s so good to drive in so many ways, in fact, you wonder if Porsche really needed to go to quite so much trouble. After all, how many owners of regular 911s – and by that I mean not the uber-versions like the GT3s or the various Turbo models that will arrive in due course – are ever likely to use even half as much performance as the new car can summon on the public road?

Kimi Räikkönen set the pace at the wheel of the new Lotus-Renault E20 in the first day’s official pre-season test at Jerez on Tuesday.

Positive, although the 2007 world champion is sufficiently laid-back and philosophical to know that testing – from the viewpoint of comparative lap times in any event – really doesn’t amount to a row of beans when it comes to the wider picture.