Daily Archives: April 18, 2012

MG shows Icon concept SUV ‘inspired’ by Nissan Juke

April 18, 2012   Sean

We say ‘inspired’, but there’s inspired and then there’s inspired. Thankfully the MG Icon is only a concept sketch at the moment, so there’s plenty of time to avoid a lawsuit from Nissan’s design department.The Icon is presumably designed to show that MG really is on the up – so on the up that it’s thinking about making something as cool as a B-segment SUV.
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CO2 gulf between old and new cars widens

April 18, 2012   Sean

Figures by the SMMT demonstrate that the average new car is now 18 percent more efficient than the average car on the road, showing  just how far car companies have come in the battle to lower emissions.Since the year 2000, new car emissions (as in, the average CO2 emissions of all the cars sold) have fallen by 23%; in 2011, emissions dropped by a significant 4.2% compared to 2010.
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Suzuki Alto goes VED-free

April 18, 2012   Sean

Suzuki has fiddled with the Alto so that it becomes the latest city car to be VED- and London C-Charge exempt. Nice to know.The reduction has come by fiddling with the engine block, adding Dual Variable Valve Timing (VVT), which not only lowers emissions and improves consumption, but makes the engine feel more responsive as well, says Suzuki.

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Babe Barnato’s Battered Bentley could make Brooklands mint

April 18, 2012   Sean

A battered Bentley once owned by original Bentley Boy Woolf ‘Babe’ Barnato will go under the hammer in May, and could fetch a fortune. It’s in a right old state, but this decrepit pile of rust is what’s left of a first series 3½ litre Derby Bentley, ordered in 1934 by former Bentley chairman Barnato.
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Revised Audi R8 to get twin-clutch gearbox

April 18, 2012   Sean

Audi will put a heavily updated R8 on sale this autumn. It will have the usual styling nip and tuck that all midlife updates get…but it will also have an entirely new gearbox, necessitating the re-engineering of much of the car. Zoiks!Says Autocar, the distinct lack of a super duper twin-clutch automatic gearbox in the R8 has “put off significant numbers of buyers from all over the globe,” prompting Audi to get its act together, and sharp – a whole new R8 is due in a couple of years, but Audi reckons the gearbox is needed before close of play on this one.
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