News

The 2009 Volkswagen Scirocco was supposed to be unveiled at the 2008 Geneva Auto Show this March, but photos of the new hatchback have already been leaked. While the car does not have the usual corporate grille design, poor VW doesn’t seem to understand that yet another similar car is going to cut into sales of their own Golf GTI, Seat Leon Cupra and Audi A3. Having a bunch of overlapping cars so similar to each other is what put them in financial trouble, among other things.

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Gulf News reported that Dubai police fined as many as 50 of their own employees for having dark tint on their personal cars that is above the legal tint level. By law, the tint should have 30% “darkness” at most, but cops themselves were freely flouting the law, so this is a good decision by higher police officials, emphasising that they should act as role models.

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GMC held a Ride & Drive event to let the press have a go with the latest GMC offerings. The drive was a road-trip from Dubai to Fujairah and back, involving no offroading. So I sent my support-monkey brother and his buddy on the trip, should anything exciting happen. The event was also supposed to showcase the all-new Terrain compact 4WD.

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Ford has pretty much confirmed that they’ve sold their Land Rover and Jaguar divisions as a package deal to Indian carmaker Tata. It is expected that US$ 2 billion will change hands, and the official announcement will be made at the beginning of March during the 2008 Geneva Auto Show.

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While dumb shows such as Pimp My Ride become repititive after five episodes, it inspired drink-maker Barbican’s Supe-up Your Ride promotion, which offered regional owners of crappy cars the chance to win a free refurbishment and customisation of their ride. During their 3-month promotion, visitors were asked to upload videos of their old beaters on clipatbarbican.com, and other site visitors voted on which ones should be customised. The winners included this R32-spec Nissan Skyline GTS.

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To be shown at the 2008 Geneva Auto Show, and probably reserved only for the hatchback-loving European market, Mitsubishi is going to show a “concept” hatchack version of the new Lancer. Seen here are leaked early images.

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While I was playing with the Nissan Altima, I had to send my support-monkey younger brother to pick up this Lincoln MKZ. This is our third Ford-owned vehicle this month, after the Jaguar XKR and the Ford Five Hundred. I haven’t stepped downstairs to look at the car yet, but for some reason, he is impressed by this vehicle, citing good acceleration, great exclusivity, and even better handling.

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Among car-related topics, there are two things popular with misguided “hip” young today – front-wheel-drive “sport” compacts, and the “sport” of drifting. But as enthusiastic as they are, cheap front-wheel-drive cars cannot drift, and cheap rear-wheel-drive drift cars are not commonly available. Or are they? This video shows that somewhat-driftable vehicles are as common than Coca Cola.

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I’ve hardly driven our Nissan Altima 3.5 SE tester at this point, but right now it isn’t what I’d call “class-leading,” considering how noisy the tractor-like V6 engine sounds. Combine that with a CVT tranny, and the whole setup just feels a bit “off” in a car with sporting pretensions.

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The 2008 Geneva Auto Show is nearing, but Volvo jumped the gun and revealed their all-new XC60 compact 4WD softroader. Quite possibly based on some Ford platform, the 2009 XC60 is admittedly aiming for a small niche market among Volvo fanboys, if there is such a thing.

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