Posts Subscribe comment Comments

0 komentar

Mercedes M-class (2011): the new spy pictures

Mercedes will launch the new M-class at the end of 2011. Our spy pictures show the new-generation ML testing in Europe ahead of launch next autumn.

Mercedes ML (2011): the story

The new ML remains a full-sized SUV, with 4wd hardware to match. But to stay in tune with the zeitgeist, there will be a raft of eco tech to trim CO2 and mpg figures.

Hybrids will be offered, and BlueEfficiency fuel-supping tech will percolate the range, featuring intelligent alternators and stop/start tech much like BMW’s EfficientDynamics package.

Engines stretching down to 4cyl

Our sources say there will be four-cylinder engines available this time, but Mercedes' latest 3.5-litre V6, and 4.6 and 5.5-litre V8s, will also be offered – the latter, in twin-turbocharged guise, will also form the basis of an AMG variant. And there'll be diesel power for those of us who live in Europe.

Expect to see the new Mercedes ML on sale in late 2011 or early 2012 in the UK, following a debut in late summer/early autumn of next year.
READ MORE - Mercedes M-class (2011): the new spy pictures

1 komentar

Performance Car of the Year photo gallery - day 1

CAR publishes its Performance Car of the Year 2010 supplement this week. It's a 36-page standalone mag charting our 2500-mile European road trip to thrash out which is the best sports car of the year. We'll have a full microsite launching later in the week, video, competitions and more - plus we'll upload a gallery every day with some of the out-takes, extra photos and background to our PCOTY road trip. Come back every day for more.

Performance car of the year

Subaru, Renault, Lotus and Ferrari pound the autoroutes from Calais. Not exactly your most low-profile convoy then.

Performance car of the year

'Is this your Ferrari, sir?'

Performance car of the year

Queuing at Dover port gives us a chance to compare the first four cars of our convoy. The rest will meet at our rendezvous in southern France, delivered from all corners of Europe

Performance car of the year

The Ferrari 458 Italia didn't look this clean and glitzy for long...

Performance car of the year

Now that's what we call a rear-view mirror shot... Maranello still do cam covers better than anyone else. Discuss

Performance car of the year

It seemed rude not to drop into the old grand prix circuit at Reims. Italia would've probably won a race here back when it was a working track

Performance car of the year

We're driving on the right here, so that's not the four-cylinder Elise overtaking the 458. Surely

Performance car of the year

Renaultsport relished a return to the land of its makers. It shone everywhere

Performance car of the year

And there's the Ferrari overtaking the Megane. Come to think of it, did anything overtake the Italia all week? We're not honestly sure it did...

Performance car of the year

Reims might be better known for its champagne, but we were here to test bubbly nature of the horsepower variety

Performance car of the year

READ MORE - Performance Car of the Year photo gallery - day 1

0 komentar

Performance Car of the Year photo gallery - day 2

Performance car of the year

CAR's road testers always dress up for the occasion

Performance car of the year

The Porsche 911 GT2 RS is trailered to the south of France from Stuttgart. It's the car that raises the pulse more than any other here

Performance car of the year

'I'll have one of each please.' The Lamborghini Gallardo LP570-4 Superleggera and Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG arrive by lorry and appear magically on the top of a Provencal mountainside. Stops plenty of passing tourist trade

Performance car of the year

Read the full story in the new January 2011 issue of CAR Magazine out on 22 December - there's a smashing 36-page standalone supplement charting the full story of Performance Car of the Year, as eight greats battle it out for CAR's annual sports car trophy

READ MORE - Performance Car of the Year photo gallery - day 2

0 komentar

Win a luxury weekend watching top motorsport

CAR has teamed up with Michelin, the headline sponsor of CAR’s Performance Car of the Year 2010, to offer an irresistible prize for enthusiasts.

This is your chance to win a weekend away in the Midlands, staying at a top hotel, eating at one of the UK’s finest restaurants and watching top-line motorsport.


Performance Car of the Year giveaway: the prize

Michelin has served up a memorable weekend away. You and a partner will spend Saturday night at the Malmaison hotel in Oxford, originally a Norman jail dating back to 1071 and now one of the finest boutique hotels in this historic city. You’ll be taken to a Michelin-starred restaurant for dinner and then on Sunday you’ll drive to Silverstone for the Le Mans Series, support races and a behind-the-scenes tour.

The prize marks the launch of the new Michelin Pilot Super Sport tyre. Many of the racers you’ll see at Silverstone will be shod with Michelin race rubber – which contributed to wins at the Le Mans 24-hour race in 2010 and a clean sweep of the LMP1 class podium at the Silverstone 1000km race.

To be in with a shout to win,. Be sure to catch the 36-page Performance Car of the Year 2010 supplement, free with the January 2011 issue of CAR Magazine out now. Inevitably with a prize of this nature, there are some terms and conditions we need to make you aware of.

READ MORE - Win a luxury weekend watching top motorsport

0 komentar

News watch December 2010: today's auto industry news

Welcome to CAR Magazine's news aggregator as we round up the daily stories in the auto industry. Top tip: news summaries are added from the top hour-by-hour


Thursday 23 December 2010
Aston Martin is back in talks with Daimler - and could even build future Maybachs for Merc, according to the FT (Automotive News Europe)
Merc may provide engines to Aston Martin in return for the British sports car company engineering and building the Maybach for Daimler, the FT report claims, quoting insiders (Financial Times)
Saab has struck a new joint venture with the Swedish government to develop transmissions (Automotive News)

Wednesday 22 December 2010
Skoda plans to double sales in the next decade. Board members said in an interview that Skoda will sell 750,000 vehicles in 2010, a 10% jump on last year -and next year the target is more than 780,000 (Automotive News Europe)

Tuesday 21 December 2010
Ford is set to leapfrog Toyota to gain its second spot in the US sales charts after a month in which it made the biggest gain in its market share since the 1980s (Detroit News)
It's a crucial week for Fiat Spa with its negotiations with unions over plans to build Alfa Romeos and Jeeps in its Turin plant (Automotive News Europe)

Monday 20 December 2010
Lexus is seeking a sharper global image, reports AN. It says Toyota's upmarket wing is planning to rebrand itself as a maker of 'progressive luxury' cars (Automotive News)
There's a new electric vehicle in (Mo)Town: the new $25,000 Triac, a three-wheeler EV. It's built by a new start-up (Detroit News)

Friday 17 December 2010
Daewoo will post its first annual profit since 2007, helped by a surge in exports to Eastern Europe. After making losses in 2008 and 2009, the General Motors company sold 680,305 vehicles in the first 11 months this year, 33 percent more than a year earlier (Automotive News Europe)

Thursday 16 December 2010
Honda is recalling about 1.35m of its Jazz supermini, also known as the Fit, to repair defective wiring in the headlights. It affects cars built at Honda’s Suzuka factory between November 2001 and October 2007. The company will recall about 385,000 units in Europe, 735,000 in Japan and 143,000 in the US (Reuters)
UK car production rose by 11.1% to 125,458 cars in November 2010 compared to the same period in 2009, and increased 28.7% to 1,176,147 for the year-to-date. The figures are still some distance away from those of 2005 when over 1,600,000 cars were built in the year (SMMT)
The Russian businessman who was ousted from the deal to buy Saab has said he still wants to become an owner of the company, reports Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet. Vladimir Antonov claimed he faced 'surreal allegations of alleged "economic crimes", "money laundering" and other false horror stories'. He lent €100m to Spkyer and commissioned an independent report which found he was not linked to any criminal activity (Reuters)
Renault has joined the growing list of companies to announce price cuts. Ten cars' prices have been reduced, ranging from £320 off a 1.6 Grand ScĂ©nic Expression, to £2050 off a 2.0 dCi 150 Grand Espace in Dynamique TomTom trim (Renault)

Wednesday 15 December 2010
Vauxhall is offering a 20% discount on the majority of its cars between 27 December 2010 and 31 January 2011. The reduction is calculated by taking 20 percent from the model's list price before VAT, after which VAT is applied to the discounted price. That means anything from £1890 off an Agila to a chunky £6165 trimmed from an Insignia VXR (Vauxhall)
Volkswagen is recalling 377,286 cars in the US, including the Golf and Jetta, after the manufacturer discovered a fire risk from fuel-supply lines that may chafe and leak (Automotive News)
Vauxhall has denied reports that it will sell MG cars in its UK showrooms, after Kevin Wale, president and managing director of GM's China operations, said that GM partner SAIC Motor Corp (the company that owns MG) could be granted access to Vauxhall's UK sales network (Automotive News Europe)
PSA Peugeot Citroen will add 1000 jobs and boost production at its assembly plant in Slovakia, the country's prime minister has said (Reuters)

Tuesday 14 December 2010
Nissan and Mitsubishi are extending their partnership. Nissan will supply a light van/wagon to Mitsubishi for sale in Japan, and Mitsubishi will provide an SUV to Nissan that will be sold in the Middle East. A possible 50:50 joint venture for producing mini cars for Japan is under consideration (Mitsubishi Motors)
Ford's sales dropped 11% last month in its primary European 19-nation region, registering 100,500 cars in November. Overall industry European sales fell for the eighth consecutive month, by 5.2% to 1.23m (Bloomberg)
China will be Audi's biggest market in 2011, overtaking sales in Germany. Sales figures for the two countries are neck-and-neck for 2010 (Bloomberg)

Monday 13 December 2010
Car makers are struggling to find engineers, despite hundreds being laid off during the recession. Many engineers have mechanical training, but the new demand is for knowledge of and experience in electric vehicles (Automotive News)
Volvo Car Corporation and ING Belgium have signed a five-year €198m loan agreement to secure car projects at Volvo’s manufacturing plant in Ghent, Belgium (Volvo)
Leeds City Council has said it is scrapping all but ‘core road maintenance’ in part of a plan to save £90m (Financial Times)
Audi has denied claims that the price of the A1 has limited sales. 20,000 have been sold since the car’s launch in late August, and Audi are confident they’ll have built 50,000 by the end of 2010, with 30,000 delivered to customers. The A1 starts at £13,145 (Automotive News Europe)
Renault expects to have sold 2.6m cars by the end of 2010, beating their previous record in 2005 of 2.5m. The success has been attributed to government incentives encouraging demand for its Dacia brand (Reuters)
The senior vice president of brand management for Mini, Dr Wolfgang Armbrecht, has said Mini may develop a ‘mini’ Mini for parent BMW, which would become the BMW group’s smallest car (Automotive News Europe)
Caterham Cars will introduce an entirely new model, powered by a Caterham Motorsport engine, at the Autosport International Show at the NEC, Birmingham on Thursday 13 January, 2011 (Caterham Cars)

Friday 10 December 2010
The governing body of Formula 1, the FIA, has announced new regulations for the sport. From 2013 the engine regulations will mandate the use of turbocharged 1.6-litre engines. There will be a 12,000rpm rev limit, but the extended use of KERS should keep the cars as quick as today's racers. The new engines are expected to be 35% more efficient, with drivers limited to five engines in 2013, and four in every year thereafter. There are rule changes for 2011 too, including the banning of team orders, though teams can still be punished for bringing the sport into disrepute (FIA)
VW's global sales from January to November 2010 were up 12.7% versus the same period in 2009. A total of 6.59m vehicles were sold, which is more than the Volkswagen Group's total for all of last year (Volkswagen)
Audi has sold more cars from January-November 2010 that it did in the entire 12 months of 2009. Around 1,003,900 cars were sold in those 11 months, versus 1,003,469 in the same period of 2009, a rise of 15.3% (Audi)

Thursday 9 December 2010
Ford is planning to show a B-Max concept car at the 2011 Geneva motor show. It's likely to point to the future Fusion replacement, a mini-MPV (Automotive News Europe)
The ageing XC90 has become Volvo's best selling UK model of 2010 with more than 6600 sold this year (Volvo)
Banks and lenders in the US are softening their credit to less well off buyers. The Detroit media report that car loans to sub-prime borrowers are now easier to track down (Detroit News)
Daimler is investing $290m in its south African plant. The eastern Cape factory will get the investment spread over four years, as Merc modernises the facility (Financial Times)
Tata has extended the warranty on its Nano to four years/60,000km in an attempt to pep up sales of the one-lakh car (Tata)

Wednesday 8 December 2010
The world's cheapest car, the Tata Nano, is still not selling its original predicted 20,000 a month. Just 509 were sold to Indian buyers in November (Financial Times)
VW may oppose demands by German unions for a payrise to workers in western Germany. They're negotiating for a 6% rise to 95,000 manufacturing workers and 5000 of the financial division (Automotive News)
BMW aims to increases sales by 10% and add expertise in electric vehicles, hybrid powertrains and cleaner combustion engines by recruiting 2600 new employess by 2011 (Automotive News)
Daimler plans to spend £50 million at its Indian factory to double the plant's capacity to 10,000 vehicles a year (Automotive News)

Tuesday 7 December 2010
Peugeot’s car and LCV sales continue to outperform the market with car sales up 7.7% and LCV sales up 24.2% (Peugeot UK)
UK new car registrations fell by 11.5% in November, a smaller drop than expected (ft.com)
Damaged vehicle recalls in the US led to a 3.2% drop in Toyota sales last month (ft.com)

Monday 6 December 2010
Talks between Fiat, Chrysler and unions to relaunch the group's main factory in Italy as a joint venture with Chrysler have stalled. Unions suspended talks over the companies' plan to invest more than €1 billion in the Mirafiori plant to enable it to build top-line Alfa and Jeep products (Automotive News Europe)
Honda says it will stop building the Element after seven straight years of dipping sales (Detroit News)
The FT reports of further clandestine meetings between Volkswagen and Fiat, as VW eyes the upmarket Alfa Romeo brand (Financial Times)

Friday 3 December 2010
• Group Lotus have announced that Karl-Heinz Kalbfell, formerly of BMW, Alfa Romeo, Rolls-Royce and Maserati, will be joining the senior management team. In addition Lotus has appointed former Ferrari man Guillaume Chabin as Director of Sales (Automotive News Europe)
• Toyota Motor Corporation's profit per vehicle in China for its luxury Lexus brand has eclipsed that of the US, where it has been forced to increase incentives following record recalls earlier this year (Bloomberg)
• Nissan will start selling its Leaf electric vehicle in Japan from December 20, hoping to become a leader in the electric car market (Wall Street Journal)

Thursday 2 December 2010
• Sales of Tata Motors' Nano, the world's cheapest car, plunged by 85% in November compared with a year earlier, the Indian car maker has said (BBC News)
• Economic woes and the end of scrappage schemes threatened a bleak start to 2011 for Europe's car markets (Automotive News Europe)
• One of Daimlers AG's stars, Jerome Guillen, has moved to US electric sports car manufacturer Tesla Motors. Guillen was director of Daimler's business innovations project (Automotive News Europe)

Wednesday 1 December 2010
• After 10 successful years at Mini Design, Gert Hildebrand is handing over the running of the design studio to Anders Warming at the end of 2010 (Mini)
• General Motors and Chrysler, the US car makers saved from collapse by government bail-outs, have announced plans to hire about 1000 staff (BBC News)
• General Motors' Daewoo Auto and Technology Co unit agrees to repay a $1 billion revolving credit facility led by Korea Development Bank this month, reducing the company's borrowing costs (Automotive New Europe).
• Porsche SE investors have approved plans for a €5 billion stock sale to reduce the sports-car maker's debt as it prepares to combine with Volkswagen AG (Automotive News Europe)
• Most Indian car makers continue to post strong sales in November, fuelled by strong domestic demand, despite drops in exports (WSJ)

READ MORE - News watch December 2010: today's auto industry news

0 komentar

Free digital preview of the new issue of CAR Magazine

The new January 2010 issue of CAR Magazine is out on Wednesday 22 December. This month we’ve driven Citroen’s brilliant new DS3 Racing, a hot hatch built by the French manufacturer’s rally team, and then joined the famed Citroen Racing outfit (and one Sebastien Loeb) for testing of 2011’s DS3 WRC machine. Gavin Green has been to Italy to thrash Lamborghini’s 700bhp replacement for the Murcielago to over 200mph (in the dark!), Georg Kacher has been behind the wheel of the new one-off, Ferrari-based and Pininfarina-built Lancia Stratos, and we’ve pitted Audi’s new A1 against the Mini, Polo and Fiesta. Plus we’ve recreated the Cannonball run across America with a Dodge Challenger and Brock Yates Jr, and counted down the defining moments of 2010 in the CAR 100.

And then there’s a free 36-page supplement, our annual Performance Car of the Year test in which we have taken the eight greatest sports car of 2010 on a 2500-mile thrash across Europe’s most demanding, thrilling and spectacular roads.

All this and the month's first drives – including the new Lamborghini Performante, Land Rover’s first front-wheel drive car, Peugeot’s 197bhp 308 GT, Infiniti’s diesel-powered 5-series rival, Chevrolet’s new Orlando MPV, and Renault’s Renaultsport Megane-chasing GT. Plus we bid a fond farewell to BMW’s M6 and welcome a Mercedes E63 AMG Estate and Vauxhall Meriva to our long-term test fleet. Then there are our monthly witty columns, every new car pictured and rated in GBU (the sharpest data section you'll find on the newsstand) and all this month’s news. Don't miss the new January 2010 issue of CAR Magazine, out on Wednesday 22 December – flick through our virtual magazine below for a taster.
READ MORE - Free digital preview of the new issue of CAR Magazine

0 komentar

Performance Car of the Year photo gallery - day 3

Performance car of the year 2010

Alex Tapley steers the SLS in convoy following the Elise. Just look how long that bonnet is...

Performance car of the year 2010

And in the yellow corner, the Italians. Ferrari 458 Italia and Lambo LP570-4 Superleggera are remarkably different propositions

Performance car of the year 2010

Orange BMW M3 GTS was only one in the world at the time of testing. The other media demonstrator had been binned by a UK TV show...

Performance car of the year 2010

The Elise is low on oomph, but high on thrills. Struggled to keep up on the hills, but in the corners, it was a revelation. Still the best steering here

Performance car of the year 2010

The M3 GTS and Subaru Impreza Cosworth carve through a moonscape. Imagine what this would be like in winter, those poles your only sign of corners...

Performance car of the year 2010

Porsche 911 GT2 RS shadows Merc SLS AMG. PCOTY sounds like fun (it was), but as you can tell by the summery dusk, there were plenty of late nights as we worked those photographers

hardPerformance car of the year 2010

Hippy slogans meet balletic 911 GT2 RS. We love hairpins like this

Performance car of the year 2010

Jethro Bovingdon and Ben Barry swap notes in the fog. 'I'll take one of each please'

Performance car of the year 2010

Lambo is layered with Alcantara. And that steering wheel! It sports a specially rough brand of suede, the most rippled rim we've ever held onto

Performance car of the year 2010

Tray bien! (Our French isn't very good)

Performance car of the year 2010

Megane Renaultsport ruled in the hills. It honestly gave as much pleasure as the supercars.

Performance car of the year 2010

High-vis cars? Check. Some of the most beautiful roads in Europe? You bet

Performance car of the year 2010

Roads around Mont Ventoux were sublime. Difficult to keep your eye on the next corner when there are views and errant cyclists at every turn to keep you occupiedPerformance car of the year 2010

Low flying cloud made our trip to the mountain extra stunning. There are no special effects here: this is what we sawPerformance car of the year 2010

Screed hilltops contrast with the metallic cars. At least we didn't lose any of our flockPerformance car of the year 2010

Chilton and Barry swap notes on the Elise. Age shall not wither this carPerformance car of the year 2010

Yes, it's way too expensive. Ludicrously so, in fact. But we still loved the M3 GTS. It's like an M3,

only more soPerformance car of the year 2010

'Hello, is that Nasa?'Performance car of the year 2010

READ MORE - Performance Car of the Year photo gallery - day 3