Why is it that Toyota cheats? I have never heard a breath of scandal about any other major manufacturer in motor sport, apart from NASCAR where ingenious cheating is applauded. You must read Tom Jensen's book, 'Cheating' (publ. David Bull, 2002), on the bad things good guys do to win in NASCAR. If you have never thought of building a car radio from solid lead, you are in need of education.

Why does Toyota cheat? It is not struggling to make its name. Take into account the burden of debt and Toyota could be argued to be Number One in the world. The point of any manufacturer is not to make product but to make money and Toyota is excellent at both, so why does Toyota cheat? It has to be part of the company's culture.

Toyota is the only manufacturer to have been excluded from the World Rally Championship and the President of the company has had to make a public apology because the company was discovered to be alerting mechanics in its dealerships to questions to be set in a national examination. No Westerner can possibly imagine the pain this must have caused him because we have no equivalent to the shame of 'losing face'. The English language does not even have an adequate word to translate the Japanese concept of 'face'.

Time was when a man in the President's position would have resigned and led a secluded life, at the very least. We are talking of a level of shame which might have called for hari-kari, ritual self-disembowelment. The matter is that serious yet it has hardly been mentioned in the Western press.

In the first case, the exclusion from the WRC, Toyota claimed it was done at 'a certain level'; in the second, a public apology from the President, two individuals have been identified and blamed. In the case of Toyota copying the Ferrari F2002, as soon as the police raided the team's headquarters and invited Angelo Santini to help with their enquiries, the team distanced itself from Santini, though did not sack him.

The Cologne police took away computers and they should be able to find the e.mail sent to employees earlier in 2003 instructing them to destroy anything traceable to Ferrari. I know who sent it, and it was not someone as junior as Santini.

Piero Ferrari has said that it is too easy to download data to a CD. Are we to infer from this that Sig. Ferrari knows that this was done? Were I in his position, the first thing I'd do if I suspected something like this had happened, would have been to have the hard disks of computers used by suspects to be examined.

When did you last read a public statement from Sig. Ferrari? Piero Ferrari is Enzo's son from an extra-marital affair, whom Enzo recognised and supported, and to whom he left his shares in Scuderia Ferrari. Normally it is Luca di Montezemolo who speaks on the Scuderia's behalf. For Piero Ferrari to speak is rare and his words must be given unusual weight.

The Modena prosecutor's office had to have hard evidence to be able to convince the German police to act. Toyota GmbH, after all, is an asset to Cologne. It employs several hundred local people while the international brigade is extremely well paid and contributes millions of Euros to the local economy. On top of that there is the prestige of a company like Toyota choosing Cologne as the base for its Formula One team.

Like Italy, Germany is a federation of once-independent states, though Germany has a considerably shorter history as a united country. You do not see many Fords in Bavaria, for example, yet Fords are made in Germany, in Cologne. Outside of churches in Bavaria you will see incredibly high maypoles and it is sport for the lads of one village to kidnap the maypole of another, but you do not see such maypoles in the North. Lederhosen is Bavarian, you'd freeze in Prussia if you wore leather breeches.