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It's not every day that you get to be a spy photographer, but I was travelling around the M25 on Tuesday evening when I suddenly noticed a strange, but vaguely familiar car ahead of us. We were getting near our junction turn-off, so I asked the driver...

How do you top the Veyron? After spending the weekend at the Pebble Beach Concours – where the new Grand Sport was unveiled – I can report it’s a question that Bugatti’s senior execs are wrestling with.

One thing's for sure, the company isn't in the mood for downsizing or replacing the 253mph supercar with a pale imitation of its predecessor.

Today is a sad anniversary for the car industry: the 20^th anniversary of Enzo Ferrari’s death in 1988.

In many ways, the company that Ferrari founded has changed enormously in the last two decades, but in others it’s stayed pretty much exactly the same – not least the continuation of the mystique that he created around the brand.

More than 20 years ago, a couple of senior Volvo engineers travelled to Audi’s Ingolstadt HQ, bought an Audi 90 20v saloon and took it back to Gothenburg.

Taking Audi’s engineering as an inspiration (front and four-wheel drive, five-cylinder engines in 10v and 20v form), Volvo planned to modernise its image and engineering, and head upmarket. But two decades on, its global sales are stuck at around 420,000. And even board members lament that its customer base still wants simple, unflashy, reliable cars.

Cute though it appears, you might be a bit crestfallen to learn that Nissan thinks the future of the car is signalled by this strange black and white Cube prototype, that gets around using an electric motor. This does not look a car likely to excite.

Your thinking might change, though, when you discover that it hauls itself to 40mph as quickly as a powerful V6 saloon, and that the production car this engineering mule will sire may be good for 60mph in around five seconds.

Figures for UK car sales in July have just been published and, to be honest, I’ve seen prettier train wrecks.

I’m sure times have been tougher before, but I’m not sure the market has ever turned quite so squarely on its heels and started marching quite so swiftly in the other direction.