CONFIDENTIAL

GOSSIP | RUMOURS | TRENDS

AUDI’S FORMULA E team boss and former Le Mans winner Allan Mcnish admits it’s a lot easier being a driver than a team principal. “You don’t have to deal with drivers [as a driver],” he joked. As a boss, “you’re trying to get a group of people working for the one goal. As a driver, the reality is that you as an individual are there to win. But when you stop looking through a visor, then you see there are two cars and the infrastructure behind it all.”

ONE IS A cut-price SUV, the other a mighty muscle car, but Group Renault design chief Laurens van den Acker reckons the Duster is Dacia’s equivalent to the Ford Mustang. No, really. He explained: “The Duster for Dacia is a little bit like the Mustang for Ford: it’s an iconic model with a big identity that’s stronger than the brand.” FORD MUST NOW stock 300,000 parts at its Daventry-based parts centre rather than the 100,000 it stocked in 2004, owing to the expansion of the range and the greater technical complexity of modern cars. That said, 105,000 part numbers will cover 98% of the demand for production.

SEAT SAYS THE popularity of its contest to name the new Tarraco will ensure that its trend of naming models after Spanish geographical locations will continue in the future. The new SUV was launched last month in Tarragona, the modern city that was formerly known as Tarraco. Seat boss Luca de Meo said: “Naming a car after a Spanish city is not a novelty for us. It’s a way to mark our identity.”