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News watch July 2012: 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 Tuesday 31 July 2012•Porsche SE recorded a first half profit of €1.15bn, in comparison with €149m for the same period in 2011. The enormous jump has come not from directly selling cars, but from the group's investments in Porsche Zwischenholding GmbH and Volkswagen AG (Porsche SE)•Reuters suggests Germany's car market is in recession, but few outside the industry would know it, thanks to a controversial sales practice that inflates official statistics and paints a flattering picture of demand.

Pigskin and sheetmetal: Redskins host car event this weekend

With fall just around the corner and summer car-show season beginning to fade, a nice transition will be held this Sunday when the Washington Redskins play host to their second-annual Redskins Rides event. Pigskin and sheetmetal fans can satisfy their dual addictions with the show at the Redskins' practice facility in Ashburn, Va. Last year, more than 3,000 attended the event, and players Antwaan Randle El, Jason Campbell and Chris Cooley were among the headliners who appeared from the team.

BMW X7 SUV confirmed to top BMW’s X Range

The BMW X5 Plug-in Hybrid will be built at Spartanburg along with the new BMW X7 The idea for BMW to build an SUV bigger than the X5 was put on ice when the world’s economy went in to meltdown in 2008, but the idea of a range-topping BMW X7 was back on the cards as long ago as 2010. Now, four years on, BMW has confirmed that they are planning an X7, that it will be built at their Spartanburg Plant in South Carolina and that it will arrive in 2017 or 2018. BMW aren’t prepared to divulge what platform the X7 will use, but it looks likely it will arrive on a revised version of the platform used for the next generation BMW 7-Series, a platform that will likely also be utilised for the new Rolls Royce SUV when that arrives, with the announcement of the X7 making a Rolls Royce SUV even more likely.