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The Super Bowl's most refreshingly honest car ad

In 2000's High Fidelity, hapless record-store owner Rob Gordon -- played memorably by John Cusack -- opines, “What really matters is what you like, not what you are like." In the year 2000, I was 24 years old and was working on a punk rock magazine, an environment not dissimilar from Gordon's Championship Vinyl. The line made a lot of sense to me; it was a quiet, back-of-the-head maxim that informed much of what my friends and I did and how we saw people. It's a shallow way of looking at things, but for those of us who came of age amid the us-vs.-them liberal identity politics of the '90s, awash as we were in Public Enemy's political consciousness, the post-AIDS gay-rights push and the loud-fast feminism of the riot grrrl movement, there was a good chance that if somebody liked the things you liked, they thought like you and they were good.

Volkswagen Passat CC at Detroit show 2008

By James Foxall First Official Pictures 14 January 2008 03:26 The Volkswagen Passat CC might look like the bastard offspring of a shady encounter between a Phaeton and a CLS, but the German firm is hoping the new Passat spin-off will attract buyers after premium car style for a relatively affordable price. When it hits UK showrooms in late summer 2008, expect the four-seat, four-door CC – it stands for Comfort Coupe – to have a sticker price starting at around £19,000. This will make it less than half the price of its most affordable rival, the Mercedes CLS.

New cars can save drivers up to 25%

BUYING a new car instead of a secondhand one could save drivers as much as 25% on their motoring costs in the first year of ownership. These savings come from cheaper insurance, lower road tax costs, improved fuel economy and no MoT test. Comparing a brand new Volkswagen Golf with a five-year old model, the new car reduces the annual spend on motoring from £1689 to £1267, saving £422 in the first year of ownership.