"We’ve waited for a new Lotus for 15 years and they didn’t disappoint." It has been a rollercoaster year, from the dizzy highs of the London motor show (half a dozen major world debuts! In the UK!) to the worrying slump of recent weeks. Here’s a quick review of my motoring year.

HARROGATE, United Kingdom – January 5, 2008: A car that parks itself and wakes you up if you nod off at the wheel may once have been the stuff of dreams for car buyers but, according to motoring website motors.co.uk, they will be top of the list for discerning car buyers in 2009.

A motoring body is calling for the cars of repeat drink drivers to be confiscated to prevent repeat offending.

San Francisco, CA (January 05, 2008) – Ferraris, BMW M3, Porches, tire smoking drifting, Honda VTECs and more roar onto Crunchyroll with the GT Channel page. More information can be found at www. Crunchyroll .com .

In July, Florida Gov. Charlie Crist announced that the Florida's Turnpike Turkey Lake Service Plaza gas station, just north of Interstate 4, was the first in Central Florida to offer E85 ethanol for sale to the motoring public.

A motoring organisation today called for the cars of repeat drink-drivers to be confiscated. The proposal from the Automobile Association (AA) came after a drop in the number of motorists caught drink-driving in Scotland during the recent festive period.

The eyes of the motoring world might be focused on Detroit over the second weekend of 2009, but in Japan, car manufacturers and tuners alike gather at the huge Makuhari Messe complex just outside Tokyo to celebrate the very best that the local customisers have to offer.

FIVE children a day are being rescued from parked cars in NSW, prompting a warning about the dangers of locking kids in cars during summer heat. Figures from motoring group NRMA show 1,890 children were rescued from shut cars in 2007-08, while 1,878 were rescued in 2006-07.