Daily Archives: July 20, 2012

£1 million cloned car ring smashed – but beware of others

July 20, 2012   simon   No comments

Manchester police have recovered £570,000-worth of stolen cars from a ring that was cloning stolen cars to make them appear legitimate. Car cloning is the vehicle equivalent of identity fraud – criminals steal a car and give it a new identity copied from a similar vehicle already on the road. This gang would steal cars and clone them to make them look legitimate. The cars were given new number plates and the registration number was used to list the vehicles for sale. The gang also used stolen V5 documents, stolen road tax discs, fraudulent MOT certificates and receipts and faked vehicle history check documents. They also used the personal details of innocent people to help create a fake history for the vehicles, making the scam very hard to spot.
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Audi brings back RS3 to UK

July 20, 2012   simon   No comments

Audi is bringing another 250 examples of the RS3 to the UK, after the first allocation of 500 all sold out. These additional cars will be available at the same price of £39,930 as first batch which were sold last year.The RS3 features a turbocharged 2.5-litre five-cylinder petrol engine with 335 bhp driving all four wheels through a standard seven-speed S-tronic twin-clutch transmission.
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Surge in caravanners this summer? Safety Tips

July 20, 2012   simon   No comments

Oh joy – there could be 20% more caravanners on the road this summer, as we all look for cheaper holidays. This coming weekend is the busiest for people going on holiday, and research by Nissan suggests one in five “towers” will be doing it for the first time. Slightly worryingly, four out of ten of those surveyed and who tow caravans, trailers or boats, admit that they have never had training on how to do so safely.One of the biggest areas of concern is drivers’ lack of knowledge on the towing capabilities of their vehicle, resulting in drivers buying and renting caravans their car doesn’t have the sufficient power and torque to tow.
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M6 Toll Road pricing cars off the road?

July 20, 2012   simon   No comments

It appears that steep rises on the M6 toll road mean motorists are going back to the traffic jams on the old M6 route.The M6 toll was designed to handle 100,000 cars a day – the normal figure for a three-lane motorway. However, last year it was handling just 34,000, down from 55,000 in 2006, and the lowest figure since it opened in 2004. Since 2004, tolls have gone up from £2 to £5.50. Most of those displaced cars appear to have gone back to the old route, which is now gridlocked again.
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MP’s report on road safety: more training and more action needed

July 20, 2012   simon   No comments

The Transport Select Committee of MPs has criticised the government after the first increase in road deaths for nearly a decade. 1,901 people were killed on Britain’s roads last year, which is 51 more than the year before and is the first increase since 2003. Road accidents are the main reason for deaths among the 16-to-24-year-old age group.
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