Happy New Year! Our Top 12 Car News stories of 2012 – month by month

Happy New Year to one and all from all of us here at Cars UK. We take a look back at the top car news story on Cars UK for every month of 2012.

As it’s New Years Day 2013, it seems the right time to take a look back at the top car news stories of 2012.

We’ve already published the most viewed car photos of 2012, so we’ll add to that with a look back at which story took the gong every month in 2012 as the most read story.

This isn’t a list of the biggest news stories of 2012 overall, but a look instead of what floated your boat on a month by month basis.

That said, and despite the news coming late on in 2012, the reveal of the 2013 Range Rover and its subsequent stories has generated the most interest in 2012, but a look at each month’s top stories perhaps throws up stories that were big when they broke but didn’t sustain interest.

As expected, the BMW M550d, BMW X5 M50d and BMW X6 M50d have been revealed as the first models in the new BMW M Division range.

The first M Diesel cars arrived from BMW officially, and the combination of stunning performance, coupled with the promise of impressive economy when you’re not blatting, saw the news of the BMW M Division’s X5 M50d, X6 M50d and M550d excite plenty of interest.

We have a spy shot from the Discovery Owners Club showing a camouflaged Jaguar. Is this the Jaguar SUV, or a Jaguar XF ‘Allroad’ Crossover?

We knew the Jaguar XF Sportbrake was on its way, but there’d been plenty of talk about Jaguar building a Crossover to cash in on the ever-growing market for luxury SUVs.

The photos we got mlooked different to the spy shots we’d had of the Sportbrake, but it turned out that this was in fact the Sportbrake and not the Jaguar Crossover.

Still, it excited a chunk of interest in a Jaguar Crossover that must inevitably arrive at some point.

Just as predicted, the Bentley SUV Concept – EXP 9 F Concept – arrives at Geneva with plenty of bulk and a 6.0 litre W12.

The much anticipated Bentley SUV bowed in at the Geneva Motor Show as the EXP 9 F Concept and was immediately big news for its ungainly looks.

There was nothing much wrong with the interior – it was typically Bentley good – but the exterior looked more like a barn on wheels than a slick, 21st century Bentley SUV. Bentley are now busy redesigning their uber-luxury SUV.

Lamborghini’s SUV – which we expect to be the Lamborghini MLC – has been revealed to a select audience at the New York Motor Show.

Bentley had its SUV at the Geneva Motor Show in March, and April was the turn of the Lamborghini SUV – which subsequently got the Urus moniker - and was much more visually appealing than the barn from Bentley.

The global economic mess seems subsequently to have put the Lamborghini Urus on hold, but the Lambo SUV was the most read story in April 2012 – by far.

Chinese authorities have reprimanded the organisers of the Beijing Motor Show for the ‘Negative Social Impact’ of scantily dressed models.

The 2012 Beijing Motor Show saw plenty of new metal arrive, but it was the scantily-clad models draped over the new metal that caused the headlines.

The Chinese authorities reprimanded the organisers of the Beijing Show for the ‘Negative Social Impact’ and criticised the ‘Vulgar Publicity’ models like BMW’s Li Ying Zhi generated. But you loved it.

The Volvo XC40 – the compact SUV / Crossover version of the new Volvo V40 – has been spotted undisguised in Norway ahead of a Paris Motor Show debut.

The rufty-tufty version of the new Volvo V40 was much anticipated, and we all thought it would get the XC40 moniker. So when we published the first spy shot of the V40 Crossover it generated huge interest.

We subsequently learnt the XC40 would in fact be the Volvo V40 Cross Country, and if the interest in this story is anything to go by, it should be a big success for Volvo.

We have the first photo of the 2013 Range Rover ahead of an official reveal and debut at the Paris Motor Show in September.

We’d had renders and spy shots of the 2013 Range Rover earlier in 2012, but this was the first photo of the all new 2013 Range Rover completely undisguised. But it did cause problems.

The photo above was the photo we ran on the story, but we ended up replacing it after Land Rover twisted arms to get it removed. We obliged, but not before tens of thousands of you had seen exactly what the new Range Rover would look like.

Land Rover has revealed the 2013 Range Rover (probably the 2014 Range Rover in the US) with a big drop in weight, new engine option and adaptive dynamics.

The arrival of a leaked photo of the new Range Rover in July perhaps encouraged Land Rover to reveal the 2013 Range Rover a little earlier than they’d wanted – a month ahead of its public debut at the Paris Motor Show.

After a decade without a new version of the Range Rover, it was no surprise that the top story for August was the new Range Rover, an evolution in style but a seemingly quantum leap in technology, with a new 3.0 litre diesel entry-level option and huge drop in weight.

The McLaren P1 – spiritual successor to the legendary McLaren F1 – has been revealed ahead of a public debut at Paris 2012.

We may have been waiting a decade for the arrival of the new Range Rover, but we’ve been waiting almost two decades for a new McLaren supercar.

So the arrival of the McLaren P1 – with the promise of stunning handling and performance – was the big news at the 2012 Paris Motor Show, overshadowing every other reveal – even the new Jaguar F-Type.

Top Gear has produced a ’50 Years of James Bond Cars’ special – presented by Richard Hammond – which airs at the end of October.

In the fiftieth year of the James Bond Film Franchise, it was appropriate that the Bond cars got a look in with the most read car stories of 2012.

In fact, it was the news of a James Bond Cars special from Top Gear (actually, just Richard Hammond) that piqued interest in October with this story garnering almost twice as many views as any other story in that month.

We have the first official details on the new Koenigsegg One:1, the most extreme Koenigsegg produced to date, a series of 5 cars for China.

The interwebs had been full of speculation about a new car from Koenigsegg – the Koenigsegg One:1. But as all the news we saw looked like guesswork and speculation we thought we ought pick up the phone and ask Christian von Koenigsegg what exactly the One:1 was all about.

What he told us brought readers flooding in from all corners of the globe.

Lotus are suing ousted CEO Dany Bahar for £2.5 million to recover the cost of his expensive lifestyle billed to Lotus.

The story of Dany Bahar’s fall from grace at Lotus had been rumbling on all year after Bahar was sacked as Lotus CEO. So it was perhaps appropriate that the year ended with the story of Lotus suing Bahar for the cost of his sybaritic lifestyle whilst holding the reins at Lotus.

Perhaps 2013 will see the Lotus stories being about their cars rather than their management.

And now we look forward to the top news stories of 2013.

By Cars UK