Scary moment behind an A1

[briang9]

Couple of weeks ago I was driving down the M6 to the lake district on a nice Friday afternoon, enjoying the drive, I was in lane two and noticed an Audi A1 coming up behind in lane 3 and a rather large plume of blue/white smoke seem to come from it. After it went past I pulled out to overtake a truck but as I got behind the A1 a huge "curtain" of very dense thick cream coloured smoke came from the A1. Was like a wall and I couldn't see anything. First concern was the A1 had suffered some catastrophic failure and might come to a stop in front of me but of course I couldn't see because of the smoke. I also decided against slamming the brakes on as there was a reasonable amount of traffic behind me. Luckily the truck driver slowed down allowing me to move into lane 2 again, just in time to see the stricken A1 drift across to the hard shoulder. Just wondered what might have happened to the A1 to cause such a thing, any suggestions?

cheers