Oh yeah, remember in 2011 when Aston Martin thought that it could sell 4,000 leather-coated Toyota iQs to its faithful city-dwelling public? That’s 4,000 a year, for £30k a pop. Find the Cygnet next to the Microsoft Zune in the dictionary under ‘what were they thinking’ commercial flops. Unless you’re looking for a cheapish, second-hand runaround with a really posh-smelling seat.

Hah! Lamborghini is going to make an SUV! How bizarre and out-of-sync with the brand, and the environment. No-one will want a two-tonne family-ghini, will they?

Oh.

Normally, anything classed as ‘a good idea’ in the car industry is shamelessly copied. Even if it’s a terrible idea. Think massive grilles, or huge touchscreens. Stupidly heavy SUVs that can’t off-road. Coupe-SUVs. See what we mean. The car industry loves a gimmick, even if it demonstrably sucks. 

But no-one has copied Peugeot’s cabin design trend, first seen in the 208 back in 2012. The tiny steering wheel and instruments atop the dashboard is purely a Peugeot exclusive. And it can’t be because Peugeot buyers all hated it – because satisfaction surveys prove customers love the curious set-up. Even if it’s a tad tricky to find a comfy driving position…

After winning the F1 World Championship at only his second attempt in 2008, Lewis Hamilton sensationally left McLaren in 2013 and swapped to Mercedes F1, which had bought out the defunct Honda operation (via world champs Brawn GP) and won precisely nothing in the sport’s modern era. Wonder whatever happened to that promising British talent?

Citroen going premium? An absurd idea. Citroen plundering the back catalogue for an iconic name and then dressing up oily bits in new bodies to go premium under said iconic name? Now there’s a plan.

Infiniti has now departed the UK market, which you didn’t notice, because these things sell slower than second-hand charity shop pants. One of the reasons for Posh Nissan’s demise was the refusal of the UK buying public to leave their Audi A4s and Mercedes C-Classes for stuff like this: the Q50. The badge was a problem, but so too was the bad press brought about by its steer-by-wire system.

Instead of a mechanical connection between the steering wheel and the front tyres, computers told the font axle how much to steer by when the driver turned the wheel. And yet, fearful of any kind of computer-says-no moment, Infiniti also installed a back-up steering column which would activate in the event of a glitch in the matrix.

So, it didn’t save any weight, it added complication, and the sense of unease when tipping a Q50 into a medium-speed bend was… clenchy. It’s probably still the future of steering, though.

When the news began to break in September 2015, that Volkswagen had taught its diesel engines to recognise when they were being emissions test and hide the monumental quantities of NOx bring emitted under normal conditions, the scale of the deception beggared belief.

It’s estimated 11 million cars were sold with guilty engines, in Volkswagens, Skodas, Audis, Porsches and so on. Meanwhile, it was discovered that VW had been part of a group including Daimler and BMW who tested the effects of tailpipe emissions on live monkeys. Many millions have been spent on compensation to date, and VW is now launching a range of clean, green electric cars, insulated from the diesel backlash.

So the question we’re left with is: did VW’s reputation pretty much get away with dieselgate?

James Bond’s car marque of choice, in bed with an energy drink? What’s going on? The tie-up was, mercifully, about more than F1 marketing, and led to Project Nebuma – or the Valkyrie hypercar, as it’s now known. An Aston Martin by Adrian Newey – it’s surely one of the most anticipated cars of the next decade.

Selling the general public a road car that can perform a wheelie. That can’t be done. But no-one told Dodge that, did they? The Demon offers 840bhp, a drag-spec transmission, drag tyres, and a stripped-out cabin. And it will, we can confirm, put daylight under its front tyres.

Ford kept this spaceship completely under wraps by hiding the prototype model in a secret room and only giving a select few of its 12 most trusted employees the key. So, when it ‘dropped’ to use the modern parlance, at the 2017 Detroit motor show, it caught the whole world on the hop.

Carlos Ghosn forged an empire by building alliances between weaker brands and using the resulting cost savings and hive mind to take on the might of VW and Toyota. Then, in 2018, he was arrested in Japan, after a secret year-long investigation into financial impropriety. His trial will be a major event in motoring corporate history, and may well redraw the map of the global car industry. 

Ok, boomer. Your sports car is now a supercar. The news became official this year, but the secret had already been out for a couple of years. Still quite a lot of online butthurt about it though.

Sort of a shock and yet depressingly predictable at the same time, this one. The ‘Purosangue’ project (that’s Italian for thoroughbred – they doth protest too much) is said to reinvent the SUV concept in a very Ferrari way, but we can’t help feeling that the only way we’ll learn to love the Ferrari SUV is when its profits pay for a new family of ‘proper’ sports cars straight outta Modena. 

Is it just us, or has the latter part of this decade been a rather controversial one, in the world of cars? 2019 itself has been a humdinger of a year for provocative announcements. Like a Renault Megane with no back seats and a price tag rivalling a Porsche Cayman GT4’s. Fortunately, there’s much more to the RS Trophy-R than that – it’s an all-time high-watermark for a track-focused hot hatchback. And deservedly Top Gear’s Performance Car of the Year 2019 - something you can read about in our upcoming Jan 2020 issue.