Pit it against its closest rivals and the new two-seat 370Z from Nissan will win every time. But who's counting?

You don't have to be car literate to understand the point Nissan is driving home with its advertising for its new two-seater, the 370Z. Beneath the banner line "Kaisers chiefed" – a layered reference to the Kaiser Chiefs and the fact that this masculine niche of the motoring market is dominated by German roadsters – the 0-60mph times of the Audi TTS, BMW Z4 and Porsche Boxster are listed. At the bottom of the list, picked out in orange, is the 370Z's time and, oh my goodness… the Nissan is the fastest at just 5.5 seconds. It means that if you and your Teutonic buddies were to race to reach 60 miles an hour – a distance of a couple of hundred yards – you'd have to sit for a whole 10th of a second twiddling your thumbs waiting for the others.

Internet giant is experimenting to reduce traffic accidents and increase the number of people sharing cars

Google scientists have tested driverless cars in California, clocking up 140,000 miles so far, the company disclosed at the weekend.

Seat's new and zesty Cupra R comes in a whole range of Starburst colours – and it disappears just as quickly, too

Twenty-five years ago, Nintendo was about to release the first Super Mario game, Back to the Future was showing at cinemas, and a precocious 13-year-old Ruth Lawrence had just gained a first in maths at Oxford. Less memorably, perhaps, it's also 25 years ago that half a dozen optimistic dealers opened for business in an attempt to foist the first Seats – the perky Ibiza Mk1 – on a suspicious car-buying public. The cars didn't exactly hurl themselves out of the showrooms. In the first month, the six dealers closed 24 sales between them. By the end of the first year they'd just crept over 400. But they kept the faith and last year 30,000 Seats were sold. That huge surge can be accounted for by two letters: VW.

It's a Volvo, so it goes without saying that it's super safe. But the new S60 saloon is a bit of a devil on the inside

Price £23,295
MPG 53.3mpg
Top speed 137mph