Proton is set to wow crowds at the forthcoming Paris Motor Show with a radical hybrid concept car based around the Malaysian company’s exclusive relationship with slowly inflating pop buffoon Dane Bowers, formerly of boyband Another Pizza.

The radical new experimental model uses a system dubbed GasolineDaneBowersDrive which works by pairing a conventional petrol engine with the raw power of Dane Bowers resentfully groaning away on a set of pedals in the boot for periods of up to 20 seconds per hour.

‘We have looked into gasoline-electric hybrids,’ said Proton Director of Engineer Things, Dr Zbidi Bidi-bidi. ‘But they were too complicated and fiddly. The genius of GDBD is its simplicity, marrying the proven power of a conventional motor with the less well-known benefits of a profusely sweating oaf.’

Proton sources say the GDBD prototype on display at Paris will be based on the never-popular Gen-2 but with several modifications including uprated suspension to take account of the substantial weight increase brought on by having Dane Bowers in the car and drain hole in the boot floor to allow all the sweat to escape.

‘We believe GDBD is the future,’ Dr Bidi-bidi continues. ‘Obviously this is a first generation system and there are problems to overcome in the areas of noise emissions and fuel consumption. Specifically, a way to stop Dane grunting and demanding cake all the time. Also, during early trials with our engineering prototype, he got a lot of weird green stuff all over the seats and left such an appalling mess in the spare wheel well that we’ve basically had to scrap that car and start again.’

Nick Heidfeld, yesterday

There was embarrassment at Sauber today as the Swiss team confessed that it has already forgotten why it hired Nick Heidfeld.

‘I’m sure there was a reason to bring him on board,’ said a team spokesman. ‘It’s just that we can’t remember what it was. I think it might have been something to do with his nice hair.’

However, other team members believe the German driver’s return is for slightly different reasons. ‘I’m pretty sure we had a meeting about it,’ said one insider. ‘And the conclusion was that we needed a driver with a sort of funny scruffy beard. Jenson Button is busy so Nick was the obvious choice.’

Meanwhile, a source close to the team boss himself offered an alternative reason, completely unrelated to facial hair; ‘In 2009 Nick programmed Peter Sauber’s Sky+ box for him,’ our mole said. ‘He then left the team and ever since the damn thing has just been filling up with episodes of Loose Women and a documentary about ocelots. When Peter tried to record a programme about Concorde last week and came home to find he’d actually got five editions of Come Dine With Me that he’d already seen it was the final straw. Getting Nick back was his only option.’

Sniff Petrol tried to contact the man Heidfeld will replace, Spanish driver Pedro de la Rosa, but he’d fallen into a river. Again.

A new V8 engine, yesterday

The German government has declared a national state of emergency following news that the country’s car companies ‘cannot stop’ designing and building new V8 engines.

‘We have been monitoring the levels of new V8s being engineered by our car makers for some time,’ admitted German Minister for Engines, Dr Heinz Zalad-Kream. ‘Within the last two years these have reached the levels of approximately one new V8 engine from Audi, BMW or Mercedes every single week and clearly this level is unsustainable as well as quite confusing and pointless. It is, how you say, a sodding nightmare.’

BMW’s Director of Engineering, Dr Heinz Tomaato-Ketcherp was quick to admit that his company must take some of the blame for the glut of newly designed German V8s. ‘We did not wish for this to happen. In fact, I repeatedly asked our engineering teams to work on new hybrid and electric powertrain technologies. I would leave them for no more than 30 minutes and when I would return I would discover that instead they had engineered another new V8 gasoline engine and put it into production. It is, how you say, a frigging nightmare.’

Senior managers at arch-rival Mercedes have been equally quick to take blame for the insane level of new V8s. ‘We have repeatedly tried to stop our engineers designing, testing and then putting into production new V8 engines,’ said the Stuttgart company’s head of R&D, Dr Heinz Oxtayle-Zoup. ‘Unfortunately, while we were doing this, we discovered that AMG had been making new V8 designs behind our back. We went to stop this and were only gone for maybe 40 to 50 minutes, but when we returned our own engineers had come up with three new V8s and put them into production. Now we have so many new V8s we will have to think up some whole new ranges of cars to put them in. It is, how you say, a fartbastarding nightmare.’

The German government’s decision to act on the country’s V8 problem is thought to have been spurred by the death of Audi’s head of powertrain systems, Dr Heinz Baykked-Beanz, who was crushed to death by a pile of new and unnecessary V8s. ‘This was a very sad loss,’ said an Ingolstadt spokesman. ‘A funeral service was held yesterday during which engineering textbooks were read aloud and a new V8 engine was designed. Oh… shit…’