Yes. We know. It’s mechanically indistinguishable from a SEAT Ibiza Cupra or Skoda Fabia vRS. Do you know quite how BORED the world is of that fact? Jaysus.

What The Most Repeated Car Fact of the 21st Century So Far neglects to mention is that the minutiae of a car’s execution is just as critical as its gearbox, engine and chassis. Which is why the Polo GTI is better than two cars that are the same as it.

The extra sheen of the Polo’s interior is just the start – the biggest difference between the three cars is on the road. Seriously.

A Fabia vRS feels like a cheap car with a very expensive engine – fast, but also a bit tall and imprecise. The Ibiza Cupra by comparison gives the impression that it’s trying too hard… all shouty, darty and hard without much charm or feel. Blame it on the height of their bodies, sound proofing and weight distribution.

In comparison, the Polo feels like a perfectly judged hot hatch marvel. It’s the last of the three to go on sale, but the GTI gives the impression that it was designed first – the ideal calibration of a shared platform that Skoda and SEAT had to cheapen and differentiate themselves from.

The ride is fractionally less busy… the induction noise slightly richer… the steering infinitesimally meatier… you’ve got to be a real hot-hatch loser hell-bent on finding tiny traces of tweaked tactility to feel the difference, but that’s what we are. Give us a good hot hatch in Wales over anything else on the road. And the Polo GTI is a very good hot hatch.

Blame it on witchcraft, blame it on mysterious mechanical alchemy… but we honestly think the difference is big enough to avoid blaming our own exaggerated memories of the other two cars.

And yes. We also know that the fizzy brilliance of a Renaultsport Clio makes praising the tactility of a Polo GTI sound a bit overwrought. The best of the three is still second best to the Renault.

To many, the lasting memory of Paris 2010 will be of Naomi Campbell vacantly smiling at a Lotus Esprit like it was a child with one eye. Baffled, almost sympathetic – but generally indifferent. To us though, even the A-list weirdness of new-era Lotus is forgettable. What’s clinging to the inside of our skulls is driving there and back in a Focus RS500. The big black Ford is a horrendous bastard of the highest order… and it’s totally fucking brilliant.

But also tinged with sadness. Dressed entirely in black, the RS500 mourns the demise of the Focus RS and its gargling baritone of a five-cylinder engine. For a mainstream model, the RS was actually pretty controversial. ‘Pah! It won’t be able to handle the power! The torque steer will give you tennis elbow!’ yelped car fans with sheltered lives; ‘it’ll amputate your arms and storm off into a ditch’ they continued, ignorantly. And that was just about the standard 300bhp car. The RS500 has another 45bhp, not to mention 15lb ft more torque. Only 500 will be made and it costs an almost unbelievable £35,000. Yet it’s still brill.

Picture the scene. You’re at Beaconsfield services, in the rain, at 11pm and all you want to do is reach a warm bed in Maidstone. Car brimmed, you approach the M25 entry slip. Because you’re bored, not to mention curious about how 345bhp could possibly be applied to damp tarmac via two front wheels, you check the mirrors and stop, right at the start of he slip road. Then, with traction control optimistically switched off, you nail the best getaway possible. Like you’ve just robbed a Post Office.

Bwaaarpp-ba-ba… tsshh… Bwaaaaaaaaarrpp… tsssh… bwaaaaaaaaaaaaarp… you’re doing the speed limit. 0-62 in 5.4 seconds. Apart from the judder of axle tramp (which incidentally, is no worse here than in a DSG equipped Golf GTI), and a swerve through the lorry ruts it happens cleanly, smartly and without a hernia. Of course, just like even a rear wheel drive car with over 300bhp, you can’t just hoof the throttle and slam the clutch without ultimately looking like a bit of a tit – but the RS500’s extra turbo boost, bigger fuel pump and fatter exhausts haven’t made it undriveable.

What they have done is make it disgustingly quick. Through 3rd, 4th and 5th, it’s M3 fast. Unhinged, nobs turned up to 11, laugh out loud even on the M20 at midnight fast. Its stability is phenomenal too. While at town speeds the steering could benefit from a quicker rack, at velocities where the RS500 beggars belief, it’s perfect.

Micro-adjustments in the fast lane are second nature. You never actually consider how much input the steering needs to change lane or tackle a sweeping bend, you just turn the wheel and it moves instantly and gracefully. No twitching, no nervousness, no delay – just great steering with a natural feel.

When you get off the motorway and stop marvelling at the speed, steering and stability, the RS500 shows off its talent as an urban magnet for admiration, camera phones and ‘rev it’ hand gestures… even from surly Parisians. We parked it right in front of the Eiffel Tower and a tourist actually asked to have his picture taken next to the car instead of the iconic French landmark.

Through the horrendous jam that is La Peripherique, it’s just as easy to drive as a standard RS, which in turn is just as forgiving as any other Focus on sale. A light clutch, progressive brakes and lots of windows to see out of. It even treats you to parking sensors and a reversing camera, to help avoid scuffing the matt black wrap when parking at the Porte de Versailles.

Then a motorshow happened. Lamborghini released a fake car we thought would be real. Porsche showed a car with spinal curvature. Ferrari took the roof off a 599. Jaguar made the world’s first fictional hybrid with jet turbines. Ford showed off a four cylinder Focus ST that makes the RS500 look even more special. And Brian May made five very similar looking new cars from Lotus all smell off hairspray. After all that, it was time to drive back. Paris back to Brum.

Most of the return journey was a blur – but we can’t talk about it for legal reasons. Some toll booths. Darkness. 20mpg. Driving from full to empty without stopping. A tunnel. A game of Angry Birds. The M20. A panini. The M25. The M40. The M6. And then, coming off a junction early for Birmingham at 1:30am. Brilliant.

If you ever drive to the middle of Birmingham from junction 5 of the M6, you might have already discovered the series of roundabouts that start at Castle Bromwich, go past Fort Shopping Park, through Nechells and into the City centre. If you’re a cock with a Saxo, you’ll already go there every Sunday night to compare neon lights with your dickhead mates. These are the best urban roundabouts in the country… and at 1:30am there’s nobody else to bother you.

First, you’re forced to stand on the brakes as you hit the left-hand exit slip-road towards lights that are always red. Sit. Wait. Then tackle the wide roundabout, right at the top of second gear. Half throttle pulls a tight line, 3/4 throttle forces the front wide with inside wheel scrabbling. Take the third exit, grabbing third gear after the apex. Heading back under the M6 now, towards the Spitfire roundabout and Jaguar plant… there’s a tight left after the hill has crested. If you don’t know it’s there, you best phone the paint shop.

Take it in second, again finding the inside wheel’s traction point and breaking it just for fun. Now a blat to the top of third as you pass Fort Dunlop. The wall is high to your left, and the car sounds frightening and awesome. Straight over the next roundabout at the Bentley dealer, in third. Up the hill, hoping the lights at the next roundabout are green. They are. Entering with a slither of brake pressure, the back is firmly tied down… jolt on some more lock, feather the throttle, lift off to try and provoke some tail swinging action – but the RS500 is having none of it.

The next roundabout is on the crest of a hill, and a very easy one to get violently wrong – as we came very close to experiencing in an R33 Skyline GT-R last year. Full throttle would see any car crash… so we give it as much as we dare and it sticks. Change direction quickly to take the exit, the front snuffling for grip as wet tarmac turns into rough, damp concrete. Grip increased, the throttle touches floor mat for just long enough to see third gear… and a speed camera. Brakes on, fun over. The last trickle into the city is taken with a heart rate far quicker than our speed.

Yes, a normal RS could have covered the ground very nearly as quickly and would have required less concentration to do so. But the times where the RS500’s massive power is a glorious pleasure far outweigh the occasions where it’s unusable or a burden. It’s expensive, ridiculous, tacky, does less than 30mpg and looks like the type of character who’d draw a cock and balls on a gravestone. But that’s exactly what it should be – a tribute to the RS, with a personality that’s a caricature of what makes that car so great. The RS500 is the naughtiest epitaph ever written.

‘Dat the new vRS?’, yaps the intricately bearded man waiting at the lights in a lowered 318Ci, ‘I been waiting to see one of dem man’. Fake Armani shades now lifted, his pupils pour over the Kermit paint job and, quite surprisingly, he doesn’t piss himself laughing. ‘Yeah looks sweet, nice rims. Open it up man’. So I do. Leave him for dead and leave me totally bewildered.

With a goopy face, under wheeled profile and self-conscious black roof, I expected the Fabia vRS to hit the streets with a handicap – but sitting at the lights outside a fried chicken shop in Birmingham, it’s the hottest piece of metal around. P Diddy could drive an R8 Spyder straight past unnoticed.

There’s more heckling at a petrol station in Kent, this time from an Accord Type S owner with even finer facial topiary than 318Ci man. ‘Nice car mate… petrol innit, what does it do?’. Being a massive geek, my answer is accurate; ‘7.3 seconds to 60, 139mph top end’. He replies in a tone of disgust, like I’d just told him my favourite hobby was rubbing crude oil into the eyes of rare sea birds ‘yeah, but what about to the gallon mate?’. Right. ‘They say 45mpg combined, but I’m getting mid 30s’ I reply in my politest voice. ‘Nah, I’d rather have the old diesel version then’.

He’s got a point. The first Fabia vRS, this car’s famously diesel predecessor, could be coaxed into hitting 60mpg. Standing in the shadow of a sign that puts petrol at £1.23 a litre, it’s hard to see the sense in replacing it with a car that does half that. That’s not the end of it though – there’s one more spontaneous talking head. Haven’t had this much attention since driving a Bentley Continental GT Speed to ASDA.

‘You see mate, you’ve made a mistake there’ said a Geordie over my shoulder, clearly thinking I’d bought it with my own money. Turning round to put face to voice, he’s wearing a Subaru cap – this man REALLY knows about cars. ‘Same as a Polo GTI that is… and yeah it’s two k cheaper on paper like… but what’s that monthly? Bet it’s nothing man. I’d pay the extra fiver or whatever and have the Dub fella’. Turns out Skoda badge snobbery isn’t completely dead after all… at least not amongst rude Geordies.

Being three potential customers who actually hand over money for their new cars, they are of course all absolutely right. The new vRS is good looking and quick, but has two big problems – it’s not a diesel and it’s not cheap enough.

First, the diesel thing. The Fabia’s 178bhp twincharger petrol engine is a brilliant thing, especially when synced up with the equally brilliant DSG gearbox – but it doesn’t feel as happy in the vRS as it does in the Ibiza Cupra, which to man-on-street is only a fiver a month more to buy. On occasions where you’d slip the SEAT into manual mode and parp about using the paddles, you leave the slightly taller, softer and calmer feeling Skoda in auto, where it upchanges early. The more laidback chassis wants a laidback, and frugal, diesel engine.

Which brings us onto problem two – it’s not cheap enough. At £15,700 it is £1300 less than the Cupra and a couple of grand less than a Polo GTI (both of which, as Subaru hat man pointed out, share a powertrain and a great deal of chassis bolts)… but, to man-on-street with a monthly payment plan, that’s not a big enough incentive to turn down a posher badge – especially when the fuel consumption, tax and insurance will be the same. What he wants is a hot hatch that’s not only cheaper to buy, but cheaper to run. He wants a diesel engine too.

Just imagine Skoda put VAG’s 140bhp 2.0TDI engine into a Fabia and then slapped a vRS badge on that. It’d hit 60 in the mid 8s, do 50mpg and be even cheaper to buy in the first place. It’d be a genuine, economical but still reasonably quick alternative to the Polo GTI and Ibiza Cupra, instead of a cheaper, less desirable version of the same thing.

So, thanks for the help 318Ci man, Accord Type S man and Subaru hat man. You’ve forced us to awkwardly conclude that despite being cheaper than two almost identical cars, and despite being fitted with an engine that’s just been awarded International Engine of the Year 2010, the Skoda Fabia vRS should cost less and have a different engine. Hilarious.

Car manufacturers make a big deal about their heritage. VW stitch chequered patterns into the seats of brand new Golf GTIs to invoke the ‘spirit of the original’, Peugeot have the nerve to badge a gawpy faced shopping trolley as an S16, and BMW even hi-jacked someone else’s heritage when they celebrated the original Mini’s 50th birthday as their own. But why bother? What does such Tony Robinson history gazing actually prove?

Two things. First, that car companies were more innovative and interesting in the past than they are now. And second, that they think people don’t like change. So when the mk5 Golf GTi came around with a radical new double clutch gearbox, proper handling and 200hp, VW didn’t say ‘it’s completely different’ they said it was ‘the original, updated’. Despite the fact it was totally new. Apart from the pattern on the seats, obviously.

The point of such comforting, stylised references is to encourage brand loyalty; ‘don’t worry, your new car will have all the things you like about your old car… but it’ll be better’. We don’t ever really feel the past seeping through a car’s controls and dynamics – we’re just told it’s there. In the DNA. Invisible, intangible… but there. Outside of seat fabric semiotics though, it’s largely bollocks. Marketing, not engineering.

Which makes the Mazda CX-7 a massive surprise, because it’s the exact opposite: a car without heritage, that somehow manages to feel like its busting at the seems with DNA. Not just any old gene strings either, but straight from their most iconic, heritage packed car – the mk1 MX5. It’s because of something we’re going to call mechanical continuity – the tiny but tangible feats of engineering that give a car its character, and that can make different machines genuinely feel related. A sense of mechanical continuity is exactly what the badge engineered new Minis and Peugeot S16s lack. There’s no tangible relationship to the cars which apparently inspired them.

Drive the CX-7 and MX-5 back-to-back and, despite the enormous differences in their purposes, the similarities are more striking than the differences. Not because of some flaky reference to the spirit of open-topped motoring either, but because of an impression of genuine ancestry. The gearchanges, for instance, could have been made on identical factory lines. Snicky, short, mechanical, deliberate and satisfying – each car’s box rewards a precise left hand.

The steering too, has a closely related manner. Over-assisted around the dead-ahead, quick to react, detailed under load and linear… both systems feel like they’ve come from the same engineer’s workshop. Light, sharp clutches which punish lapses in concentration. Brakes which bite with little effort but can be modulated easily. Interiors with circular vents, clear dials and stubby gear levers. Bodywork that doesn’t feel as if it’s got class leading torsional rigidity. The cars are separated by 15 years, 750kg, drivetrain layouts, transmissions, purposes and even number of seats… but there’s a clear ancestry pinning them together.

So why don’t Mazda say call it ‘the MX-5… but off-road’ or something? Why don’t they peddle the past to sell the future? They’d got reasonable grounds to do so after all – the CX-7 feels more closely related to an MX-5 than a 207 S16 does to a 205 S16 after all. They could have given it pop-up lights and everything.

It’s probably because they think the car buying public aren’t stupid. They don’t expect us to fall for the marketing spiel… they know that seat fabrics don’t give a new car the spirit of an old one. It’s a commendable, respectable way of dealing with car buyers. Treating them respect, and an assumption that we’re not all susceptible to pretty pictures and break dancers with Gene Kelly’s head. And when was the last time you saw a CX-7? Exactly. Never. We’re too stupid to give it a chance. If it was called the MX-4×4 they’d be all over the place.

Digesting the news… then spewing it out in 60 words

Pics of Alfa Romeo’s Bertone styled Pandion concept car which will be shown at Geneva leaked out. Bentley released details of their Continental Supersports convertible which arrives this Autumn: 621bhp, 590lb ft of torque, 202mph and 3.9secs to get to 60mph. And VW announced a smaller, duller, slightly cheaper version of the Golf GTI – the 177bhp, £18,000 Polo GTI.

Owners of the last shape Mazda3 MPS spent just as much time defending their cars against cynical mates as they did driving them. Banging on about the 256bhp power output, 6.1 second 0-62mph time and 155mph top speed, they were adamant that because it had better stats than a Golf GTi, the MPS was a better car. Sadly, their mates knew otherwise. The old car looked bland, felt synthetic and squirmed its power away with embarrassingly premature wheelspin. So, perhaps this new one can redress the balance and give its owners some more sophisticated grounds to argue on.

Encouragingly, all the key numbers have stayed exactly the same. Power, acceleration and top speed benchmarks are all identical to the last one, from the same 2.3 litre turbocharged four cylinder engine. All the work has gone into making it lighter and more rigid. So, in not worrying about making it look more impressive on paper, have Mazda made it more impressive on tarmac?

Being based on the current Focus, it’s got a crisp balance, a well-judged blend between roll control and pliancy, and decently chatty steering. It feels better resolved, more sophisticated and smarter than the last one – but it’s still not as accomplished as a Megane, Golf or Focus hotty. The better ride and awesome speed do mean we’d have an MPS over a Civic Type-R though.

And there’s still no getting away from the insanity going on at the front wheels. Any camber, rut or grease will be sniffed out and followed like a hunting hound to fox piss. On dry country roads it’s fun chasing the car down the route it wants to take, but on anything damp it’s a pain – even on what look like straight roads, you’ll be tugging against the torque as the boost comes in at 2,500rpm. Despite having limited torque output in first and second gears, and despite an LSD and torque-sensing software that adjusts the grunt depending on your steering inputs, it too often shows exactly why Ford invented Revoknuckle.

But the new MPS doesn’t rely on paper stats anywhere near as heavily as the previous car – despite the common faults, it comes closer to feeling like a well-rounded, controllable and dynamically talented hot hatch than before. Add an enormous kit list with parking sensors, bi-xenon lights, a cracking Bose hi-fi, leather everything and sat nav to a low £21,500 price and it starts to look like a sensible buy. The looks, even though it’s only available in practical but uncool 5dr, finally do the frenetic power delivery justice.

So, while even new MPS owners will need to defend their car to their mates, they’ll be able to put up a much stronger argument. It’s still no class leader, but offers incredible value, is incredibly quick and  much of the time frantic fun. If you’re the type who likes to end an argument with an arm wrestle, it could be just what you’re looking for.

Digesting the news… then spewing it out in 60 words

VW’s tactic of buying every car maker in the world finally paid off, as they officially overtook Toyota as the world’s largest manufacturer. Peugeot doubled the value of their last decent hot hatch, the 306 GTI-6, by announcing they’ll never make a GTI again. And Ariel ‘did a Lexus’ by pricing their new Atom V8 at £120k for Spring 2010.

Digesting the news… then spewing it out in 60 words

Tesla were shocked to receive positive press about their car’s battery life – 313 miles on one charge (set by some bloke in Australia), is a new electric production car record. ‘How much?!’ echoed loudly around the globe when VW admitted their Golf R will cost £29,000. And Mitsubishi clutched at straws, saying their 2010 SUV will have Evo X undergarments.

Numbly Fraudulent