Public or private settlement? The answer is obvious

As the late Michael Jackson said when accused of all sorts of unpleasantness (and I’m paraphrasing here), I didn’t do it but I can’t prove that, and to try would be expensive and fill up a lot of column inches. So it is with Toyota, which has settled a wrongful death lawsuit in the America. It’s over a crash in Utah three years ago where a Camry is alleged to have accelerated into a wall of its own accord and killed two occupants. The company maintains there’s nothing wrong with the car, but with a slew of safety recalls in recent years, it’s cheaper to settle this case – and others that will follow – than have everything repeatedly dragged through court for years to come, have its reputation sullied time and again, and spend just as much money, if not more. It’s a business decision, one of the head not the heart, and probably the right one. Is Toyota innocent or guilty of the charge? We'll never know, but if I was looking for a safe and reliable car for my family, there would be plenty of brands behind Toyota. Never quite sure about Michael Jackson's innocence though...

I love winter

Cold weather transport chaos in the Yarrow household and we weren’t even off the driveway. Yesterday morning my wife went outside to defrost our Ford Focus and once she’d prized open the driver’s door she couldn’t get it shut again. It would bang against the surround, not latch and irritatingly pop open again by about an inch. Sensibly not risking a one-handed drive to work she got the Jeep Wrangler out of the garage – probably better suited to the conditions – and took that. Putting the Focus in its place, where it was slightly warmer, was enough to thaw out the mechanism and get the door closed. Expecting the worst, I’d already rung the local Ford dealer to see how much a replacement latch would be – £90 for the part, £80 for fitting and then VAT on top, making just over £200. That would have been very, very irritating. Given I got away with it, it's hard to be too annoyed... particularly when I've got this view out of my window.

The power of 800...

Two stories featuring the number 800, revealed within hours of each other. There can be no clearer indication of what’s going right and wrong with brands who participate in the car industry in the UK (as opposed to the UK car industry, which is virtually non-existent). Eight hundred jobs lost at Honda, a company which has struggled in the last few years through problems it could do nothing about, such as the Japanese earthquake and flooding in Thailand which both affected its factories badly. But it’s also been crippled by its own decisions, such as the almost total absence of creative vision behind the door marked Future Product. For the UK, it has a supermini, a C-segment hatchback, a D-segment saloon/estate, a big SUV and a couple of hybrids which aren’t exactly flying out of showrooms. That’s a product line-up from 15 years ago. Honda desperately needs B and C-segment crossovers, a small SUV, a small estate car, a couple of people carriers (where was the replacement for the FR-V?), a sports car or three and something to fit below the Jazz. Are they on the way? In the required volume, no. If I was a Honda dealer I'd be worried. Contrast all that with Jaguar Land Rover, riding a wave of critically acclaimed products that’s seen record sales and the promising of more with the F-Type on the way. Eight hundred new jobs means in the last two years it’s taken on 8,000 new employees. Read that sentence again. Genuinely staggering.

My CES show report

Here's the link to my CES stories, as promised. Ten top bits of future car technology

http://cars.uk.msn.com/features/car-technology-of-tomorrow-at-ces-2013

Swipe for the future

I’ve been to a few motor shows in my 14 years as an automotive journalist. Some of them are pretty busy on press days, but I’ve never seen anything like the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). There are more than 3,000 exhibitors and more than 100,000 delegates here in Las Vegas. It’s ridiculously busy. Amid all the new TVs, tablet computers and Lord knows how many iPhone 5 cases, there have been a few motoring gems. I’ve written a report for MSN which I will post a link to when it’s live – hopefully later this week – but here’s my favourite. In the future we won’t push dashboard buttons to activate our in-car features. We will use gesture recognition technology. That’s my arm in the picture, waving over a sensor in a demonstrator booth on the stand of tech company Harman. To scroll though infotainment menu pages you simply swipe over the sensor, as you would if you were using an iPad. I love it.

Vegas, baby

No regular Monday post as I'll be on a plane to Las Vegas, reporting on the ever-expanding automotive elements of the Consumer Electronics Show. More on that later in the week.

Driven: Skoda Rapid

It’s an indication of how high Skoda has pushed the bar, but I must confess to being a tad disappointed with the Rapid. Don’t misunderstand me, it’s a fine car and has plenty of the qualities seen on every other VW Group product – it feels well-built and offers a very refined drive. It’s comfortable, has a big boot and comfortable seats for long journeys. But there were a few too many irritations for my liking, the sort that wouldn’t stop you buying the car but would drive you mad once you had. Take the cup holders, which are ahead of the gearstick and half-hidden under the centre console. When the car is in fifth gear it makes it very tricky to get a taller cup – the sort I use – out. Also, there’s a ‘windscreen max’ button, which is very useful at this time of year for clearing misting. Yet the blast of air isn’t actually at maximum power, it’s at about 75 per cent. You then have to turn it manually to get it to full. Every time I plugged in my iPod, the car’s screen kept saying ‘initialising MDI’  for about 10 seconds – I’ve never known any other Skoda do that. Finally, the clutch pedal was a few milimetres too close to the footrest on the left side. All this is attention to detail stuff, and I’ve come to expect Skoda to get that right.