Thus can Britain now be divided, between the coming generation, who know nothing of Noel, and the rest of us, who know Mr Tidy Beard's CV inside out: Radio 1 Breakfast Show; Multicoloured Swapshop; The Late, Late Breakfast Show; Mr Blobby and Wrinkly Arse (OK, Crinkly Bottom then); the end of his time at the BBC; marital breakdown He even did Top Gear, you know Some of us grew up with Noel. So what's he up to now? QPod. Not just " I-sort-of-might-have-heard-of-someone-whose-name-sounds-like-Noel-Edmonds Not "maybe" Not "of course" just to satisfy an adult. No; he had no more idea of who Noel Edmonds was than I have of 50 Cent (which is none, to remove any vestigial doubt in your mind on that). Specifications Price: £4,195 + VAT Engine: 4-stroke single cylinder air cooled; 340cc Performance: Top speed of about 40mph CO2: low Worth considering: Quad bike; used Smart; Mr Blobby outfit and a pogo stick Thomas Jewitt, our 11-year-old co-tester whose contribution you'll find next to this column, has never heard of Noel Edmonds. It achieves this with a lightweight, carbon-fibre body and chassis and a new mid-mounted, common-rail diesel engine of 1.5 litres able to deliver 136bhp and 184 lb ft of torque. The two-seater Eco Racer can be a coup?a convertible or a low-windscreen speedster, and Volkswagen says a test car has genuinely achieved all those figures Driving fun with a clear conscience Sounds just fine to me..
It's designed to show how an ultra-economical car can also be fun to drive, in this case 83mpg, 0-60mph in six seconds, and 143mph. Not the Polo GTI, which has Japan as its first retail market ahead of Europe, but the metallic orange Eco Racer. The toothy front grille looks like the worst excesses of mid-1990s Korean car glitz, but otherwise the Brake represents what could become the next Audi TT.Volkswagen revealed the biggest show surprise of all, a car previewed nowhere. So Audi chose Tokyo to reveal its Shooting Brake concept, finished in white - which is Japan's favourite car colour, for its ability, in Shinto lore, to protect occupants from hostile spirits. The car is named after its US-domiciled Japanese designer, Akino Tsuchiya.You see ever more imported cars in metropolitan Japan, many Audis among them. It's like that because there are two doors on the left, but just one on the right. The corporation made its own presence felt at Tokyo with the Mercedes-Benz F600 HYgenius fuel-cell car, and the Chrysler Akino concept, a little MPV with rotatable front seats and a sofa-like rear seat, mounted asymmetrically.
The Senku is a futuristic flight of fancy, but back in the land of reality, it is about to put a hydrogen-fuelled version of the rotary-engined RX-8 into limited production and will later launch a version of the Mazda5 MPV with that same power unit.Mitsubishi's concept model for the Evo X looks modern, racy and less embarrassing than the outgoing Lancer Evo IX, and is the pinnacle of a proper Lancer range that we'll see in the UK - including the hatchback, or Spotback, version previewed at September's Frankfurt show.We, in Britain, may also, unlike the rest of Europe, get the cute, rounded 'i' supermini; despite its tiny 660cc engine, it won't end up any cheaper than a base-model Colt, but it's an interesting city-car alternative.DaimlerChrysler divested itself of many Mitsubishi shares recently, but retains about 12 per cent equity and a desire to continue technical collaboration. It's a hybrid, inevitably, and its huge Mazda-shaped front grille lights up with a graphic depicting moving rotary-engine graphics. It's a low, aggressive-looking machine, and it would be a surprise if Nissan didn't go racing with it.By contrast, the Foria concept (as in euphoria), designed by the British Royal College of Art graduate Richard Winsor, at Nissan's Creative Box studio, in Tokyo, is a clean, restrained and slightly retro look at a possible replacement for the Silvia/200 SX.Just as good-looking is Mazda's Senku, a rotary-engined, four-seater coup?ith one huge, rearward-sliding door on each side. Previously, this fastest of Nissans, invariably with six cylinders, twin turbos and four-wheel drive, has been based on a Skyline saloon, but this time the GT-R is a model in its own right. Cameras create images on the inside of the windscreen pillars to display the view that the pillars would otherwise block.At the opposite extreme of the auto spectrum is the concept study for the next GT-R, due for production in a couple of years' time.
