VW road-legal Race Touareg, Gold Edition (2011)

Volkswagen has unveiled two new Touareg SUVs at the inaugural Qatar motor show. One is a rather cool road-going version of the Race Touareg 3 that’s just notched up a victory at the 2011 Dakar rally, and the other is an awful monster called the Touareg Gold Edition. Underneath the skin it’s a genuine version of the latest Race Touareg 3, with a turbocharged 2.5-litre diesel engine, a trick four-wheel drive system and a super-stiff chassis.

GM SUVs probed by NHTSA after reports of stalling

Federal regulators have opened a safety investigation of as many as 865,000 General Motors SUVs from 2005-07 model years after complaints that inaccurate fuel-gauge readings led to stalling and one accident. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's preliminary evaluation is looking at 2005-07 Buick Rainiers, 2005-07 Chevrolet TrailBlazer 360s, 2005-06 Chevrolet TrailBlazer EXT 370s, 2005-07 GMC Envoy 360s, 2005-06 GMC Envoy XL 370s and 2005-07 Saab 9-7Xs. NHTSA said in a posting Friday that it has received 668 complaints of inaccurate fuel-gauge readings, 58 of which involved stalling vehicles.

MINI go Rallying: MINI WRC Video

MINI Countryman WRC ‘Old’ Mini – that’s Mini without all the capital letters – ‘owned’ rallying for a period in the 1960s. Particularly the Monte Carlo Rally, which it won in 1964, 1965 and 1967. Names like Paddy Hopkirk and Rauno Altonen – well, more so Paddy in the UK – became as well-known as Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton are today.