I finally met James Cain from GM's financial news section yesterday in the RenCen - once I'd finished the obligatory several circuits of the place getting lost.

James was the spokesman for GM during Saab's recent and prolonged demise and was always on the end of a phone to front up to some fairly hostile Swedish reaction to GM's tough stance on licensing issues.

He also had some fascinating insight into how the iconic RenCen - this year thankfully with less motown music everywhere - was built.

Staying with the RenCen theme, last night's Automotive News World Congress dinner in the building, featured an emotional appearance by British racing driver Dan Wheldon's wife. Wheldon - winner of the Indianapolis 500 Borg-Warner Trophy in 2011 - died at the end of last year in a racing accident and the supplier paid tribute to his short life.

I've been in a few media scrums in my time, but last night's bunfight after Fiat/Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne spoke at the dinner took some beating.

Surrounded by dozens of the world's media - and four huge security guards replete with ear-pieces - the diminutive Fiat boss in trademark black jumper struggled to make himself heard above a barrage of questions.

Nonetheless, he gamely answered a bewildering array of shouted topics with the sheer mass of media present testament to his global influence. And the Detroit audience during his presentation certainly appreciated what he'd done by turning Chrysler around.

The weather's just started to get, well a bit more Detroit-like after a few glorious sunny days. Cold and raining, the forecast is predicting quite a bit of snow tonight and tomorrow, so fingers crossed the big white bird makes it out of Detroit Metro airport.

Out to Delphi's hugely impressive HQ this morning just down the road from where I'm staying in Troy and a chat with its chief technologist Andrew Brown, whose CV and various committee nominations leaves me wondering how he finds 24h in a day.

The Tier One operation is thinking up some pretty amazing ideas for driver aids that are partly driven by its own evaluation and the inexorable march of government regulation and while it might not be possible to create the accident-free car, Delphi's doing what it can to get close.

Mind you, with the way drivers weave across freeway lanes in Detroit, those driver aids are going to have go work fairly hard to cope, although having lived in Paris, I'm toughened up to some challenging driving.

I also had a long discussion with OESA boss Neil de Koker who gave a fascinating tour de force of the current US economic climate and as America braces itself for Presidential election fever.

You can't get away from electioneering here - it's everywhere - with some fairly robust TV advertising highlighting their candidate attributes - and unusual for me to hear - equally highlighting what people argue are the opposition's shortcomings.

Back to the RenCen now for the Automotive News World Congress - I echo my colleague Graeme Roberts' struggles with the layout - I did several laps of its cavernous interior before I found the right escalator/room combination. In fact, like Graeme, I passed the same people several times, all perambulating in giant circles.

People can't stop talking about the weather here - and I thought we Brits were bad enough at it - but it's an unusual auto show in Detroit that doesn't have to battle mighty blizzards in January.

[Winter is finally coming: snow and 30F temperatures are forecast for Thursday and Friday - ed]

Compared to last year, the Detroit weather for the 2012 auto show is positively Bahamian, although that didn't stop me having to scrape the ice off the windscreen this morning.

A quick hop down from Troy and into the show proper, with thousands of journalists from around the world jockeying for interviews and the best camera angles. The profusion of camera lights also ratchets up the already-high temperature even more leading to some fierce heat.

Talking of cameras - somebody's just taken a picture of me filing copy - for what purpose I have no idea but maybe he was having a slow news day.

I also managed to grab a quick chat with Ford CEO Alan Mulally - after having persuaded some sceptical public relations people that I really was going to be fast.

Luckily, I knew the Ford boss from my time as an aerospace journalist and when he was heading up Boeing - it's not a bad CV the man has - and once that link was established he chatted away for a couple of minutes before his attendants whisked him off.

It's a show to talk to people while you can - by sheer coincidence as I write this on the Mercedes-Benz stand - the CEO of the US Original Equipment Suppliers Association (OESA) Neil De Koker has just sat opposite me. I'm seeing him tomorrow, but it's always good to have an extra chat.

Interestingly, I saw Denso this morning and on their stand they are proudly describing how they came up with the stunningly simple but effective idea of the QR reader.

"We decided to lease the QR out and open it to everybody else," Denso SVP marketing & sales Terry Helgesen told me. We thought it would be more beneficial to overall society to open it up."

Denso's largesse shows there is sometimes more than just the bottom line.

It's not often I'm addressed as 'Comrade' but I was given the name after spending a fascinating couple of hours this morning (25 November) with the new adviser to the Belgian Trades Union Congress (ABVV) in Brussels, Rudi Kennes.

The new adviser has some union pedigree here. Kennes is extremely well known in Belgium for helping to lead the fight against GM's Antwerp closure plans - a long and bitter battle that eventually resulted in the plant shut and thousands made redundant.

From the "You'll never work alone" scarf on the wall - he's a fan of Liverpool in the Premier League - to the hand-sketched drawing of Che Guevera on the other wall, Kennes is a union man out of central casting but comes bursting with a fund of stories, anecdotes and union tales. He even claimed Liverpool FC songs were union-based - well, the city does have a history of fairly miltant labour disputes, as I said to him.

That's after I found his offices. I confidently said to the taxi driver "Hoogstraat 42" as Rudi had told me only for him to scratch his head and say he'd never heard of it. "Must be main street" I said in French thinking this would do the trick.

It didn't. Further head scratching and muttering to his control finally found the right translation but it gave me a tiny insight in this tiny country into how much language continues to divide the two communities of Flemish and Walloons.

I've been seeing the Union Congress and supplier-based companies today in Brussels - I write this from the airport having just come from Tenneco and Toyota-Boshuko Europe - and having attended the CLEPA aftermarket conference yesterday.

Like or loathe Brussels as the self-appointed arbiter in so much, it is the home to some pretty powerful European instituions with CLEPA's presence reinforcing its role as a key lobbyist for members who represent 5m workers across the European continent.

And the decision of so many important companies to be here - I've even just passed a British Telecom building - underlines the city's unique position at the heart of so much.

Addendum: I was filing some copy last evening when 'ping', an email popped up from Eurostar. I'd travelled over from London on the rattler and was fairly amazed not to have wi-fi on board - even of the paying variety - despite my very much being in steerage.

Eurostar got in touch and thanks to them for being so prompt to say, well, there wasn't any yet but it would start to be introduced from 2013 and on its shiny new train sets.

I rang the press office but they weren't able to say if the service would be free or not. Even Chiltern Railways in the UK has free wi-fi so surely Eurostar...?

Over to Brussels on the Eurostar - isn't it time they made wi-fi available - even for a fee? - for this year's CLEPA aftermarket conference in the Belgian capital.

Brussels clearly plays host to myriad pan-European organisations - it even has an EU parliamentary museum - the 'Parliamentarium' although as much as I enjoy politics I think you'd have to be seriously nerdy to like that one. However, the location allows CLEPA as the automotive supplier body to take full advantage of its geography to push its case.

I talked to CLEPA CEO Lars Holmqvist last night and one surprising fact to emerge was that his European members total a staggering five million.

That would explain why the EC sits up and takes notice of CLEPA, with the Commission's director DG Trade Garcia Bercero turning up to explain his position with regard to the vital free trade agreements currently happening around the globe and which are crucial to supplier members.

There are around 200 delegates here - a significant amount of them German - but instead of CLEPA organising a huge, formal, sit-down dinner, it provided a buffet set around stand-up tables.

It made for a relaxed, informal way to network, with people moving around and chatting and allowed delegates to get some real bang for their buck as well as from the formal format of the conference itself.

Networking is a key word at this conference and CLEPA does it particularly well.

It may be a sign of the times, but Saab spokeswoman Gunilla Gustavs is moving on to pastures new after nearly 20 years at the Swedish automaker.

It's fair to say the last two years or so have been a phenomenal series of ups and downs for the automaker, whose breathtaking twists and turns Gunilla has chronicled with unfailing good humour, authority and not a little dose of patience to boot.

As every dramatic development took shape, as hopes were raised only to be dashed again and then reignited in another form, Gunilla has been at the end of a phone line, not only to me but to countless journalists around the world, whose endless questions she has calmly answered as if it were the first call of the day.

It's not over for Saab yet, but even if it is and let's hope it's not, Gunilla has been outstanding. 

In Paris for my first EquipAuto show - although it's not exactly strolling along the banks of the Seine - this is a vast warehouse of an exhibition hall right by Charles de Gaulle airport and over whose entrance countless jets thunder every 20 seconds or so.

Talking of which, our arrival into Paris yesterday (10 October) was enlivened by having to hold at an intersection right by a live runway and exactly at the point where Air France Boeing 777 after 777 rotated. Interesting if slightly unnerving.  

My colleague and I didn't exactly linger last night either when looking for somewhere local to eat - any area around an airport is the same - vast numbers of logistics firms and cheap hotels - this quarter reverberating to the pulse of wailing sirens - so we retired to our modest billet but which happened to serve some very decent nosh. Cold snails excluded mind - warm snails with garlic butter and herbs yes - cold, green fungi, er no.

Paris is currently being crippled by yet another of its interminable transport strikes - so we opted with two other residents - for a taxi to the show this morning - and wished we hadn't. I'm reasonably used to Parisian cab drivers but this one was as mad as it was possible to be - at one point the Asian lady in the front passenger seat squealed as a bus was flagrantly cut up with my protestations of "Monsieur" firmly swatted away. 

Anyway EquipAuto has seen off its first day - a significant sized show with myriad companies - the usual big players - Valeo, Delphi, Bosch etc, but also a massive number of tiny companies by comparison.

There are a mixture of press conferences and individual briefings - some in English, some French, with vast squadrons of staff sporting company colours, while the press centre has a mixture of machines in 'AZERTY' and 'QWERTY' formats - a nice touch - normally you just get the host country's tradition.

Several national component supplier bodies were represented today - even though it's overwhelmingly an aftermarket show - so it was useful to have an insight into association thinking in countries such as Turkey and Spain - both at opposite ends of the financial spectrum at the moment it would seem.

Day two tomorrow and then home - we're going to scrutinise our taxi driver extremely carefully before we even get in this time...

JLR was so overwhelmed by media demand to try its new Evoque at the 'international' launch based in Liverpool that it took a second tranche of UK writers to the spectacular border country between England and Scotland yesterday (6 October) to put its latest creation through some pretty demanding paces.

That border country is wild and unpredictable - borne out by lashing rain one minute and dazzlingly blue sky the next - which gave an added spice to some Evoque off-roading to test its myriad traction faculties.

I'm guessing my esteemed colleagues on these pages - whose product knowledge dwarfs my own - would vouch this is a sure-fire winner for JLR.

A burgeoning order book, a hefty waiting time, not too hefty mind, six months is about all anyone will put up with and looks that will melt the sternest of critics, mean the Evoque is JLR's 2011 runaway success.

This car - SUV? - is a joy to handle in wind, rain and sun, all of which were ladelled out in huge dollops up in the border country yesterday.

And pulling into Edinburgh just off the iconic Royal Mile, the Evoque created quite a head-turning stir, with the Scots giving the three-door coupé a double take as it glided to a halt.

The Evoque was an eye-opener in the wilds of sheep country, but what will it be like on the Monday morning commute to the office? My guess is it will be equally good to drive in suburbia.

Call me a cynic but the UK government's proposal to raise the motorway speed limit from 70mph to 80mph, smacks of political opportunism coming as it does, days before the majority Conservative party's conference in Manchester next week.

There have been a raft of mysterious feel-good propositions emanating from Tory Central Office or whatever it is they're calling HQ these days - in a bid to lighten us Brits' mood as we contemplate the latest economic meltdown scenario over the cornflakes.

Rubbish collection back to a weekly timetable, a possible easing of painfully deep defence cuts at some unspecified later date and now a potential revision of speed limits.

On my shortish journey to work I spend about 10min on a motorway - after having been routinely overtaken on the slip road leading up to it - (what is going through people's heads there? - I'd venture not much) and although you have your usual madmen aiming to break 100mph, pretty much everyone is running at around 80-85mph if not less.

The argument goes that a law almost universally ignored is not a just law, but the usual band of eco-warriors and various vested interests have thrown up their hands in horror at the thought of an extra 10mph.

Look at Spain they cry and indeed, earlier this year, Spain had a handbrake turn and reduced its limits to 68mph in a bid to save fuel, although some wags noted: "What next - will they make us go to bed earlier to save electricity?"

A new limit of 80mph will simply mean motorists driving regularly at 90mph maintain those opposed to an increase, but anecdotal evidence suggests that in these straitened times - and with petrol in the UK retailing at around £1.35 per litre - people are actually voluntarily easing off the accelerator.

After the tub-thumping speeches and the "let's get Britain moving rhetoric" of next week - the Conservatives are equalled in their sloganeering by the Liberals and Labour just for balance by the way - it will be interesting to see how concrete this measure really is.

If the UK government really is on the side of the motorist, it might be better to channel its energy into ensuring we're not fleeced at the pumps rather than adding 10mph to the speed limit.

Some pretty brave people in Utah plucked up the courage to help a biker trapped under a burning car and save his life. 

The biker is clearly badly injured, but he's alive thanks to some quick thinking and not a little guts from passing civilians. 

Good samaritans indeed.