The launch of a new independent British sports car always carries with it a certain amount of cynicism and the unveiling of the Lightening electric supercar at the British Motor Show was no exception.

The problem is certainly not its styling, so often a stumbling block for hand-built sports cars. No, the Lightening wins the award for the best-looking ‘cottage industry’ car since TVR shut shop and not just in a ‘looks great across a dimly-lit, crowded room’ sort of way; you actually wouldn’t mind waking up next to it.

Performance isn’t an issue either – nobody’s going to argue with the equivalent of 700bhp channelled through a revolutionary four-wheel-drive system that incorporates traction control and regenerative braking. They even claim that after a 10-minute charge it’ll do 200 miles. My ‘phone can’t even receive a call after 10 minutes!

And herein lies the problem – it all sounds too good to be true. Do a bit more digging into the press pack and you find that fateful line “on securing the appropriate investment or partner, development, testing and manufacture will take place.”

The batteries alone will surely eat up most of that time being, as they are, incredibly complex, nanotechnology items and, at the risk of adding to the cynicism, if they’re so good, why aren’t GM, Honda and the rest of the big boys using them?

It would be a shame if the Lightening comes to nought – you’ve got to admire the ambition and on looks along the car deserves to see the light of day but on this occasion, I’ll believe it when I see it.

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…no, me either. I’m not exactly vertically blessed, but if this technical drawing is anything to go by I think I would have to display the physical dexterity of Jenna Jameson to wedge myself into one of the +2 seats which wouldn't be attractive. At all.

I have a sneaking suspicion that Lotus has been very clever with this layout though – imagine how many customers are now able to justify a Lotus to their other halves by saying “look, it’s even got four seats!” It’s genius.

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The new Ford Focus RS is building on 38-years of Rallye Sport heritage.  It's fitting then that the man in charge of the project, Jost Capito is a former Paris-Dakar rally driver as well as the director of Ford Team RS, 2007 World Rally Champions.

And so why, you might ask, with all this rally expertise, isn’t this car four-wheel drive? Afterall there's 296bhp going to those front wheels.

Capito's answer is that he and his crew actually developed two cars: one front wheel drive, the other four-wheel driven, and found the front-wheel drive car to be faster and much more fun around their test track. It also makes the car cheaper to produce.

Obviously, without driving the car it's difficult to know if they've made the right decision, but with pedigree like this, you'd be a brave man to bet against them.

Now check out:

• Ford Focus RS on video

• Ford Focus RS at the British Motor Show

• Ford Focus RS - First Look

What a relief that first impressions of the new Lotus Evora are good. Very good in fact.

The initial pictures made the 2+2 look slightly fussy but on the stand at least, it looks taught, sophisticated and, best of all, very well finished.

The proportions are spot-on and it manages to fulfil its brief perfectly: to deliver all the usual Lotus qualities to a more discerning clientele that might otherwise hot foot it down to their local Porsche dealer.

The basics are all here, now all it needs to do is show its class on the road and from past experience the boys from Hethel very rarely disappoint in this area.

If you look beyond the silly name of the Seat three-door Ibiza – it isn’t a 'Sport Coupe', no matter how long you look at it - you’ll actually find a very decent little car.

The new Ibiza’s proportions are well defined, the interior spacious and it benefits from Volkswagen Group’s all-new supermini platform.

This will also be the platform for the next generation Polo. We can expect an EcoMotive version soon later in the year too, though Ford may already have the clean, green supermini category covered...

Now check out:

• British Motor Show - Latest

• Ford Fiesta Prices Announced

• Seat Ibiza Sports Coupe - First Look

Spent last night in the company of David Smith, Jaguar Land Rover’s new CEO. He’s an amiable chap who was originally responsible for negotiating the deal that saw Ford sell the companies to Tata. Now gamekeeper turned poacher, he explained the how the bureaucracy of the Ford empire had been swept away. The board new consists of just three people. “We can make decisions in minutes that would have taken several meetings at Ford,” Smith told me. “This will mean we can bring vehicles to market faster.”

Sounds to me, like a much better way of running a car company.

Gordon Brown is probably the most unlikely of automotive ambassadors, but that didn't stop him from opening the British Motor Show this morning. Yep, Prime Minister Brown - who doesn’t actually hold a driver’s license and wants us all to drive hybrids within ten years - visited London’s Excel this morning to check out all the ‘green cars’ on show.

Sadly, I must have missed him. Maybe he was looking at the fuel cell version of the Nissan X-rail or had a quick peek under the covers at the Honda Hybrid Concept? Green agenda or not, Brown and his government desperately need the majority of otherpetrol and diesel-powered cars in this hall. The Treasury currently creams in £25million worth of VAT from fuel every day. My calculator makes that nearly £9bn a year. And if you thought that wasn't enough casht, the government nets an additional £30bn a year in fuel duty.

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We've had noise-cancelling headphones for a while now and the principle is simple - external noise is cancelled by an equal and opposite sound wave from the speakers.

That’s all well and good in the enclosed space of a pair of cans but what about applying the same technology to a car?

Trust Toyota to be the first to try with its new Crown Hybrid. The Active Noise Control system uses three microphones to detect engine noise and uses the front door-mounted speakers and parcel shelf subwoofer for cancellation.

The system doesn’t affect the car’s sound system or passenger’s conversations although there are reports that a WGC (Whingeing Girlfriend Cancellation) setting is under development.

As the BWM M1 Procars are wheeled out for one final fling at this weekend's German Grand Prix, replete with period, early-'80s F1 stars we've delved into the archives and come back with this bit of nostalgia. Enjoy.

Just as you should never judge a book by its cover, so you should never judge a car by the picture. The design of most modern cars is so complex that their subtleties and proportions are lost in two dimensions. It’s not until you see them in daylight in the middle of other traffic that you can really appreciate their merits. The Mercedes CLS, for example, looked terrible in the original pictures but is magnificent on the road.

That’s why I’m reserving judgement on the Lotus ‘Project Eagle’ until I’ve seen it for real at next week’s London Show. In the pictures the design looks a little fussy but I’ve a suspicion it will look a great deal better when we see it for real at the Excel next week.