Toyota

Motor racing is, sometimes, the cruellest of sports. There was no competition for the Toyota Hybrids as they closed out their season and the end of their very successful venture into LMP1. And, as the race wore on, it was clear that the early lead taken by Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi and Jose Maria Lopez developed into a routine. Nothing would stop them winning their first major race and it was well deserved. Then the tech started to play up..

In terms of seriousness, it's not in the league of the disastrous brake pedal problem a couple of years ago but the scale of the recall is so huge that it's a PR nightmare.

It sometimes seems as if the one company you don't want to be if you are a car maker is Toyota. Having admitted last year that it put innovation and a rush to market ahead of its traditionally prudent, quality driven, commercial strategy, the announcement that it more than a million and a half cars have faults requiring recall causes yet more damage to the company's once mighty reputation.

Malaysia imposes extraordinary levels of tax on cars manufactured outside ASEAN. But due to special temporary arrangements for hybrid cars it's cheaper to buy a dual-fuel Honda than the standard version

Is it big brother or logical safety? Toyota is to fit a "brake over-ride" system to all new models starting with the 2011 model year. What will it do?

It's beginning to look as if Toyota simply had no disaster plan. It took a year to decide that the sticky pedal was a real problem, and only last week they said the Prius wasn't affected. It is now. And the sharks are circling as a litigation bandwagon starts to roll. But not all faults are attributable to cars.

If your Aston Martin Vantage is too fuel-thirsty for that trip to the shops, or the school run when it never warms up, or if it's too big to thread through the city or those ever-closer pillars in car parks, there's a solution.

Mr Katsuaki Watanabe is not a happy man. As the first head of Toyota to announce a loss in 71 years, he is standing down. The irony is that the losses are really not his fault.

Where will the axe fall next? Renault's plans to cut 6,000 jobs are not the first cuts in the European car industry.

General Motors and Toyota in the US are recalling cars for a variety of defects