Fiat Panda Gets Euro 5 Engines in the UK

Last February Fiat recorded Europe’s lowest average CO2 emissions for the fourth year in a row. And now it reinforces its eco-friendly character by introducing an all-Euro 5 engine line-up across the Panda range in Britain. Read more »

Caterham Seven Makes its Way to China

Small boutique sports carmaker Caterham is looking for ways to expand its sales reach by entering Asia’s most lucrative car market. The UK-based company announced today that it has signed an exclusive deal with import firm Courtenay Trading International (CTI) to sell its iconic Seven model in China.

Caterham said that even though it has had a “long-standing presence” in the Far East, most notably in Japan, this will be the first time the Seven will be available in China.

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Study: Speeding the Most Common Cause of In-Car Arguments Amongst Couples

It’s happened to all of us at some point. You’re behind the steering wheel and just when you think that everything is fine and dandy, the person sitting in the passenger’s seat, be it your spouse, girlfriend of boyfriend, starts yelling: “Slow down, you ‘re driving too fast!”, “You should have listened to me, we missed our exit” or “Keep your distance, we’re gonna hit the car in front of us”.

And that’s how car arguments start, ladies and gentlemen, turning a promising journey into a nightmare…

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How Shocking: Electrical Issues Plague Modern Cars

With modern cars fitted with more and more electronic equipment, it is logical that electrical problems are popping up much more frequently than in past years. According to a Warranty Direct survey in the UK, electrical faults account for 27% of all car malfunctions every year.

That’s a 17% rise over just five years ago, with more than four out of 10 cars each year facing breakdowns due to electrical problems that are mostly rather complex, and expensive to fix.

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Tata Considers Developing Engines with Jaguar and Land Rover

Tata Motors’ owner, Ratan Tata, confirmed today in the company’s annual report that the Indian carmaker is considering developing an engine in cooperation with its Jaguar Land Rover division.

"To optimize the synergistic strengths between JLR and Tata Motors in India, an examination is also under way on a joint engine development program which would have manufacturing facilities both in the U.K. and India," Ratan Tata stated.

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Bluebird to Attempt to Break Electric UK Land Speed Record

The Bluebird team has a history of more than 100 years old. A history in what, you might ask? The answer is, breaking speed records. Not just on land, but also on water. It all began in 1911 with Sir Malcolm Campbell, who named his team after Maurice Maeterlinck’s play.

In the following years, the family team broke more than 30 speed records and now, Sir Campbell’s own grandson, Don Wales, will attempt to make history once again over a century later.

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Would You Pay $50,000 for Kate Middleton’s Used VW Golf?

Say want you want about the media’s obsession around Britain’s newly-wed royal coupe, Kate and Williams, but for some people, like Sonny Brazil, it’s a gift from the heavens.

You see, Sonny’s father Al, bought Kate Middleton’s inky-blue 2001 VW Golf hatchback back in 2009 from her brother James for a reasonable £1,400 (about US$2,300 or €1,600 at today’s exchange rates).

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It Came From eBay Hell: 1993 Jaguar XJ6 “Airport Limousine”

In the glory days of air travel – when you could still smoke and fly without the fear of being groped and fondled by security personnel wearing latex gloves– some passengers were lucky enough to commute from the terminal to their hotel in the back of an airport limousine.

These stretched cars, with their multiple rows of seats and doors, were essentially the primitive precursor to the modern day shuttle bus.

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Renault UK Launches Gordini Versions of Wind Roadster, Slashes Prices of Base Models

The UK market is welcoming the launch of the third Gordini-badged model after the respective versions of the Twingo RS and Clio RS, this time in Wind roadster guise, with buyers having a choice of two engines, the 1.2-liter TCE 100HP and the 1.6-liter 133HP.

In addition to the Wind Gordini models, the French firm also slashed the list price of the Dynamique and GT Line trim levels by up to £2,215, with prices now starting at £12,995, instead of £15,205.

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New Study Suggests One in Eight UK Drivers Falling Asleep on the Wheel

Surely, it has happened to you. You embark on a journey driving your car and, when you feel tired or ready to fall asleep, you keep on driving because you just have to get there on time. At best, you drink a cup of coffee hoping it will wake you up. What you don’t realize is that you are setting up the scene for a, possibly fatal, accident.

A new UK study by Brake and Cambridge Weight Plan that was presented today at a Parliamentary reception attended by MPs and road safety professionals revealed than in the past year, one in eight drivers has “head-nodded” at the wheel, or in other words, fallen asleep between 2 and 30 seconds, often without even realizing it.

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2012 Toyota Yaris: New Gallery with 86 Photos and UK Pricing

Toyota today announced prices for its next generation Yaris hatchback in Europe including the UK where the supermini is available for order now with first customer deliveries to take place in September.

The new Yaris is available in three- and five-door body styles with British buyers offered a choice of four grades (T2, TR, SR and T Spirit) and three engines including 1.0 and 1.33-litre petrol units and a 1.4-litre D-4D turbodiesel. On-the-road prices start from £11,700.

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UK Insurer Parts the Most Unreliable and Costly Car to Fix

In an article on a BMW-faced Honda Accord we found for sale on Craigslist back in 2008, we wrote that in a perfect world, our ultimate car would be “designed by Italians, engineered by Germans, built by Japanese and marketed by Americans”.

So, what’s the worst car one could imagine? Well, if we played around with the above statements, we’d say one designed by Japanese, engineered by Americans, built by Italians and marketed by Germans.

But UK insurance firm Warranty Direct had something a little bit different in mind. Instead of playing the origin card, the company decided to check out its database of 50,000 live policies on cars aged five years on average to part the UK’s most unreliable vehicle that would break down every other month and cost an average of £2,050 (equal to US$3,270 - €2,330) to fix each year.

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BMW Creates New Performance Edition models to Celebrate Sponsorship of 2012 London Olympics

There are many ways to celebrate the sponsorship of an event like the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, but when it comes to automakers, the norm is the introduction of special edition models.

For BMW, the festivities over its sponsorship of the games begin with the UK launch of two new Performance Edition models based on the 1-Series hatchback and 3-Series sedan.

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It Came From eBay Hell: Triumph TR3 with an Italian Body and an American Heart

Much like Christine in the Stephen King novel of the same name, this 1957 Triumph TR3 Special began life as nothing more than a…car. Since then it’s mutated into this thing that sports a faux-Ferrari body and a Chevy 350 V8 under the hood. Read more »

It’s a Man’s World: 7 in 10 UK Women Prefer to Leave Car Servicing to Men

Despite all the talk about equality of the two sexes, there are still some things that even women prefer to be done by men like having their cars serviced – at least in the UK. And we ‘re not talking about getting their hands dirty but actually taking their car to the service station.

According to new research from car servicing network, Bosch Car Service, which surveyed 1,022 UK adults (18+) representative of the UK adult population, just three out of every ten women take their cars for servicing on their own, in comparison to seven out of ten men.

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Video: F1 Racing Cars Launching at Goodwood Festival

OK, so a highly-tuned Toyota Celica with the innards of a Corolla WRC (and then some) may have posted the fastest time at the Goodwood hill climb. And yes, it beat a handful of Formula 1 cars to achieve this win.

But we’re pretty sure that the sounds and sights of an array of F1 cars ranging from a 1939 Mercedes-Benz W165 to 2010 editions of Ferrari, Lotus and Red Bull, will make the back of your hair stand up. To find out if that’s true, just watch the video after the jump.

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2011 British GP: Red Bull’s Reign Disrupted

None of the usual suspects – aka the drivers of Red Bull or McLaren- occupied the top spot on the podium of the British Grand Prix that took place on Sunday at Silverstone. Instead, the winner was Fernando Alonso, who managed his first win of the season, and 27th overall in his career, making the best both of Ferrari’s obvious progress and the catastrophic pit stop of early leader Sebastian Vettel. Read more »

You Can’t Touch This: Boy Racer in Citroen Saxo has Cops Running in Circles

A rather foxy yet clearly irresponsible teenage driver of a Citroen Saxo had British police running in circles –literally- in a chase that took place at the Hams Hall industrial estate near Coleshill, England, last month during a police crackdown on what they call illegal car cruise events.

One of the spectators who had stopped on the side of the road to enjoy the chase filmed the young man’s shenanigans and uploaded the video on Youtube for all to see.

It all started when an unmarked Seat Leon hatchback pursued the driver of the silver Saxo who managed to escape by speeding up, down and even in…reverse on the busy highway.

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Magical Thinking Breaks Amarpreet Gill’s Bristol Car Concept

I really wish industrial designers would leave the engineering to, you know, engineers. Nothing irks me than a designer trying his or her hand at conjuring up some magical, black box powerplant for their vehicle design studies. Take Amarpreet Gill for instance, a Leicester-based designer and the brains behind the blandly named Bristol Car Concept.

Using a combination of piezoelectric “threads” as well as photovoltaic paint and glass, the Bristol Car Concept “harvests energy from the surrounding environment, rewarding the consumer with the gift of free energy”.

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Redesigned Chrysler Grand Voyager MPV Reaches UK Shores

Chrysler’s facelifted for the 2011 model year Town & Country has arrived in Britain as the revised Grand Voyager. Different name aside, the UK market model features the same styling revisions as its American counterpart, including a redesigned nose, LED tail lamps, new rear bumper and revised tailgate on the outside, and a restyled dashboard and steering wheel on the inside.

However, instead of the new 283HP 3.6-liter Pentastar V6, the Grand Voyager is offered exclusively with 2.8-litre CRD diesel engine producing 161bhp at 3800rpm and 265lb ft of torque.

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