Articles by Paul Gover

The man who went upside-down at Bathurst at 280km/h has landed on his feet for the 2012 V8 Supercars season. Coulthard was lucky to escape unharmed as his Commodore barrel rolled at The Chase in 2010 and has survived another near-miss with Walkinshaw Racing. This time he has parachuted into the fast-improving Brad Jones Racing, which has picked up a $1million-plus deal with Lockwood for the new season, after he was left standing when the music stopped at the Holden factory operation. Coulthard lost his spot when Russell Ingall arrived with Super Cheap Auto cash for 2012 and his own backer, Bundaberg Rum, stepped down. "There were four drivers for three cars. Someone was going to be left with nothing," Coulthard revealed to News Limited yesterday. "Credit though to Walkinshaw Racing and Ryan Walkinshaw, as they've put this in place for me. They've honoured everything they said they would do. I'm basically on loan for a year. "I've got no hard feelings. At the end of the day motorsport is a business and you have to run it like a business." Coulthard joins a BJR operation that continues with three cars, with Jason Bright on point and David Wall joining as a rookie. The transplanted New Zealander is confident he will turn his career around and deliver on the promise he showed with Paul Cruickshank's under-funded effort before winning a spot with Walkinshaw Racing. "I've had a tough couple of years. I was looking to become one of the top five. It wasn't just me that didn't perform, we all struggled. "My goals and aspirations haven't changed. I go into every race wanting to win. The fact I haven't done it makes the will and the hunger even more desirable." Coulthard said his next step comes at the official V8 Supercars pre-season test at Sandown on February 11, when he will drive his Lockwood Commodore for the first time. "I want to pick its brains and get familiar with it. I don't want to throw my input into BJR until I've driven the car. Until the test day there is no point. I'm pretty keen to just do that phase and see what the car's stregnths are, then go from there." Coulthard is now 30 and past the 'young gun' stage of his career, but still taking every race and season at a time. "I do one year at a time. I'm not going to look to next year because there is a lot to achieve before 2013 even gets here," he said. "If we have strong year and get results then it will look after itself."

The one-time V8 Supercars firebrand, and three-time runner-up in the Bathurst 1000, is now a lifetime member of the team at Brad Jones Racing.Richards is commemorated with a small star on the door pillar of the three cars that will compete in this year's V8 Supercars championship and team manager Kim Jones says his star will always shine on their cars."He will be part of the family forever. He was like a third brother to Bradley and me," he revealed yesterday."It makes Bradley and me feel better to have him along as part of the group. He only raced with us for three years but he became a member of our family."The Richards star was revealed yesterday at a pre-season function attended by his widow Charlotte. "I think it's great," she said.Jones said the team considered a number of designs for the tribute before settling on a star."It's what he was. We made a star with JR's logo in the middle of it. We looked at all sorts of things, like incorporating his logo into our logo, but we think this is the best end result."A number of V8 Supercars teams have displayed short-term tribute messages, most notably to former Ford Australia president Geoff Polites, but this is the first long-term commitment.The Jones brothers - sometimes known as the Dodgy Brothers - have been racing together since time on motorcycles, then a broad spread success in other classes up to V8 Supercars."We started pushbikes before that. It's been a long time," Jones said. "How long will we keep going? I don't know. But while we enjoy it we'll keep doing it and JR will be with us."

The five-door A-Class hatch is part of a range of new Benz babies and is clearly aimed straight at the BMW 1 Series and Audi's new five-door A1.

Betting on the outcome of this year's sales campaign, tipped as one of the closest on record, has already closed at Sportsbet.com.au even though the result will not be known until December 31. It originally set a field for 2012 that had the Mazda3 and Holden Commodore at equal favourites, paying $2.25, in a field spread to the Mitsubishi Lancer at $126.00. The Toyota Corolla, which won five months of the 2011 campaign, opened at $5.50 but blew out slightly to $6.50. But betting closed today and Sportsbet says it will not be re-opened. "The market is closed. It won't be back up," says Shaun Anderson, public relations manager for Sportsbet.com.au "These ‘how many in 2012…’ type markets don’t usually stay open for too long, usually only a couple of weeks. No doubt there is already sales figures out that people in the industry would have that we don’t." The chance to gamble on car sales was classified as a novelty bet by Sportsbet, which also set a relatively low limit on any punting. "All of our novelty bets have a limit. There is always interest in these novelty type markets, but usually at the lower end in terms of being $10 or so bets. If someone was having big money on it the alarm bells would probably start ringing!"

None will ever challenge Jenson Button or Lewis Hamilton for a grand prix race place, but they will be wheeling one of the world's great supercars later this year. And they will have paid at least  $526,800 - drive away, no more to pay - for the privilege. They are the members of the waiting list for the McLaren MP4-12C, the grand prix company's first road car since the benchmark F1 of the 1990s, and they won't have too much longer to wait. "There are 14 cars on the way to us. Ten for customers, two for demonstrator work and two for showroom purposes," says Greg Duncan, executive chairman of McLaren Sydney. "We've got 10 customer cars in production. On top of that, we've got about 20 deposits from people who want to drive the car." That means more than $15 million in orders for a car that has not even reached the road in Australia, but has been very favourably compared with the Ferrari 458 Italia. Duncan admits the McLaren program is running a little late but says the Trivett group has just spent more than $5 million on the fit-out, alone, for the prestige dealership that will house the brand. It's on O'Riordan Street in Alexandria, close to Sydney airport, and will also house Rolls-Royce, Aston Martin and Bentley. "They are running late and for two reasons. They had some early problems that they decided to fix, and now the car is right they set up a new regional office in Singapore which has complicated things a little," says Duncan. "But now it is humming along. They are producing cars probably a bit quicker than they thought they would." The first two 12Cs are painted in McLaren's historic racing orange and plain white, although Duncan says customers are going first for black and the global preference is for a deep red. "They are flying two cars out for us. We wanted to make a bit of a statement. We've optioned them a little differently so people can see what's available. The orange car is a bit sporty and the white car is a bit GT or luxurious." The dealership is set to open on March 15, when McLaren chairman Ron Dennis will attend a function in Sydney just ahead of the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne.

The latest national road toll figures show the daily death rate averages 2.6 people through the week then rockets to 4.6 on weekends.But there is plenty of good news in the numbers from the Federal Department for Infrastructure and Transport for 2011, including the lowest total toll since 1946.The final figure last year was 1292 deaths, down by 4.4 per cent on 2010 and continuing the steady decline from 1603 in 2007. Also, youngsters are safer as there was a 17 per cent decline in the number of 17-25 year-olds killed on the road.But the figures from the Department of Transport include a warning for older drivers, as the death toll for people aged over 70 jumped by 13 per cent.The Northern Territory continues as the most dangerous place to drive, with an average death rate of 19.12 people for every 100,000 compared with 5.15 and 5.12 for NSW and Victoria, and only 1.64 for the ACT."It's a very welcome outcome. We've seen sustained improvement in the road toll over a number of years," says Andrew McKellar of the Australian Automobile Association, which represents state and territory motoring organisations."It reflects a number of different factors, but there is obviously no room for complacency and continued room for improvement."The AAA attributes the falling toll to vastly improved cars and even improvement in roads, but McKellar is no fan of inappropriate speed camera programs."Our research shows the overall level of risk on our national highways is low than it was. But one in five of our national highways is still rated high-risk and that's unacceptable."Vehicles safety technology has improved radically in the past 10 year years. Only 10-12 years ago two airbags was the limit, but these days four and six airbags are much more common and electronic stability control is a requirement. Over the years those sorts of systems will continue to lead to more improvement."The approach to speed limits has a real impact on road safety outcomes and the approach we would take is that limits need to be appropriate to the setting and condition of the roads."The 2011 statistics show men are still more than twice as likely as women to be killed on the road, while pedestrians account for 189 deaths, but the number of motorcycle deaths fell by 10.4 per cent to 200 people.Freeways are Australia's safest roads, with only 150 deaths recorded on 110km/h limits in 2011, compared with 390 for 100km/h roads, 231 for 70-90 and 339 for up to 60km/h.

There was a boring overnight flight back from Tokyo and, through the dark, I got a sharp call from the other side of the Qantas cabin.  The man who now heads sales and marketing for Mazda in Australia, but  who was then with The Age newspaper, desperately wanted me to watch a movie.  Less than an hour later, we each got a final warning from The Purser about disturbing the sleep of the other passengers.  Like we cared ... We laughed until our eyes watered as Ferris streaked through a series of adventures, including the theft and destruction of the classic Ferrari - most likely a re-bodied Nissan Z-car - that belonged to his best friend's dad.  Now Ferris is back for the Superbowl in the USA. Apparently he has moved on from Ferris Bueller's Day Off, which was a wild adolescent romp through Chicago including stunts like a machine to convince his mother he was ill and needed a day off school.  If you can believe Honda, which is paying the freight for the Superbowl spot, Matthew Broderick's character is now selling cars. Is that really a surprise after 26 years?  After all, Ferris was a crazy risk taker who liked relaxing more than working and enjoyed nice cars. It will be interesting to see how Honda has moved the story, as well as its signature lines "Anyone, anyone?" from the school teacher and the "Bow bow. Chicka, chick Ahh" punchline.  But Honda is not the only one on the Superbowl roster for 2012 and happily paying $3.5 million for a single 30-second slot. Kia is heading to the frozen north with its Optima, Audi has vampires and - wait for it - Volkswagen has a choir of barking dogs that 'sing' the theme from Star Wars.  As for the Superbowl itself, who is Collingwood up against this year?

We can expect a more aggressive look, as this Carparazzi illustration shows, as well as SkyActiv powertrain technology.If the Australian dollar holds up the starting price when it arrives in 2013 is also likely to be closer to $40,000 than today.

It believes the German brand is working on another loaded luxury coupe to sit above the existing A7, using the mechanical package from the next A8. There is no timing yet, and the Carparazzi image is not official, but it's likely to come in 2014 with a pricetag beyond $200,000.

Carparazzi pictures show a prototype with the same raised seating position and right height as the bigger 5 Series GT, as well as a body with very short overhangs.It's like to break cover at the Geneva Motor Show in March.