Autocar - First for car news and reviews

So after all the hype and reputation destruction, it’s cured by nothing more than plugging a non-descript box with a touchscreen into the car and pressing some buttons.

I’ve just had our new long-term Prius recalled and reprogrammed to cure the thing with the brakes, which has gone from being described as “there’s nothing wrong” to a full blown, country-wide recall.

Last week just might have been a small landmark in Autocar’s 114-year history.

Steve Sutcliffe, a driver whose abilities are held in high esteem by more than one supercar manufacturer, had to admit that electronic chassis ‘aids’ have reached a new level of competence.

Any cynics who did not believe that Serbian businessman Zoran Stefanovic has serious plans for entering F1 with the assets of the former Panasonic Toyota team will have to think again pretty promptly, as the newcomer’s possible participation has been clearly acknowledged by Bernie Ecclestone, the F1 commercial rights holder.

Bernie also made it clear last weekend that, according to the terms of the Concorde agreement, teams are permitted to miss three races each year, a revelation which, I have to confess, I was unaware of, but which could throw a crucial lifeline to the Campos and US F1 teams who could ideally use a little more time to prepare their cars for the world championship fray.

Being a frugal man of simple means I think I spend more time with an eye on our test cars’ fuel consumption than some of my more leaden-footed colleagues. That and having a 36-mile each-way commute. Actually, the journey is quite an easy one. I’m on the M40 motorway before I’m in third gear of a morning, then it’s the M25. a stretch of the M3 and, finally, a couple of miles of urban crawl before arriving at the office.

I’ve often noticed that I’m able to record noticeably better fuel consumption on the way to work in the morning compared with the evening drive home. To be honest, I’d not given it that much thought. The morning traffic tends to flow more smoothly than that in the evening, so I suppose I’d absently mindedly put it down to that.

The news that Wolfgang Bernhard is going to head up Merc’s van division and production caught my eye.
Bernhard, you see, is a disciple of Daimler boss Dieter Zetsche. The old man took him to Detroit to help run Chrysler after the Daimler Chrysler merger, and Bernhard also has run the VW brand and, ironically, been integral in Cerberus’s takeover of Chrysler when Daimler abandoned ship.

The reason his appointment caught my eye is that there have been a lot of rumours that Zetsche won’t be running Merc for too much longer. It's nothing to do with his effectiveness as the boss, mind you, but tragically his wife has recently lost a battle with cancer. And who could blame him for feeling differently about work after such a loss?

There is only one car related story in town at that moment and that involves an accelerator pedal.

But just in case you are as bored by that as you are of John Terry’s non-footballing activities, I'm going to write about Kia's seven-year warranty - which sort of ties in with Toyota, as it's an example of putting things right when they go wrong.