Autocar - First for car news and reviews

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?

It does seem odd, to say the least, that you might line up a 1988, 96bhp Ford Fiesta next to cars wearing such vaunted badges as Cosworth and RS. But we wanted to produce an insight into the more attainable Fords that an enthusiast could enjoy, given that much of the Blue Oval’s performance heritage is increasingly out of reach to most. And if the Fiesta XR2 is anything, it’s cheap and fun.

I became acquainted with the XR2 throughout a long and very un-heritage car friendly drive through a mildly flooded and very dark central Wales, dressed in full ski jacket and winter hat combo because the heater wasn’t working. By the time I got to the destination I was besotted.

The ordinary-looking Volkswagen Golf Mk6 pictured below is actually a prototype running VW’s upcoming plug-in hybrid drivetrain.

I was in Wolfsburg yesterday (where it was minus 5 degrees centigrade under a clear blue sky) and had a brief steer around the local roads.

Audi will be as strong as ever; with the new 3-series, BMW's well placed to have a good year, too. And yet if you backed me into a corner right now and made me pick the premium brand that I'd invest my pension in on January 1st 2012, I think I'd pick Mercedes and Daimler to enjoy the biggest gains across the year.

And it's not because of the arrival of the new A- and B-class. These two big-selling hatchbacks will be vital to Daimler's onward profitability, of course, and a much more conventional platform should really make them earn their keep for Stuttgart this time around. But, perhaps unfairly, I don't expect excellence from either of those two; because, within their respective classes, merely 'good' should be good enough.

I have something of budget used car obsession, and recently I have discovered how affordable the Subaru Forester is. I now can’t stop thinking about it.

There are plenty of cheap four-wheel drive vehicles worth consideration if you’re after winter transport, but the Forester is the ultimate cheap buy. After all, for many buyers a four-wheel-drive is very much a seasonal/on-demand thing that isn’t needed for much of the year.