News in Brief

04th November 2007

Park and hide on GT-R launch
At a special unveiling of Nissan’s new GT-R in Japan this week, journalists from around the world made the trip to a secret location to see the latest supercar.

They were surprised to arrive at a patch of waste ground. Only when they were taken to a hidden door did they realise they were at an underground car park, which had been cleverly converted into a moody launch venue.

DVLA is caught out by plate rule
Sometimes, even the DVLA falls foul of the latest road laws. We asked it whether reg plates with the supplier’s details removed would cause an MoT failure. We were told this was fine if the main characters were still legible.

But legislation from the Vehicle and Operator Services Agency (VOSA) says plates fitted to vehicles registered after 1 September 2001 must display the name and postcode of the supplier, or the car won’t pass its test!

Tech talk’s lost in translation...
At a presentation during the build-up to this week’s Tokyo Motor Show, one interpreter got carried away. At the end of a Japanese engineer’s hour-long speech, the expert forgot to stop translating.

The English-speaking press overheard a conversation between the engineer and his colleague as he left the stage. “How was that?” he asked. “We have over-run by 20 minutes,” replied his aide.