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CAR tech: Britain's £1bn auto-industry revolution

By Damion Smy Motor Industry 21 October 2013 09:30 BMW, Jaguar-Land Rover and Nissan are just a handul of the car companies to have seen the potential in British design and engineering. Read on to find out just how they're actually helping Britian fight Germany as the car world's most pivotal auto-industry R&D hub. More than £1billion will be invested in the UK over the next decade to build a hub of design, engineering and manufacturing nous in the automotive equivalent of California’s Silicon Valley.

Citroen's Survolt charges into life at Le Mans Classic

French cars, Belgian drivers and a French track sounds like a recipe for Gallic flair (well, almost). And so it proved at the weekend when Vanina Ickx, daughter of six-time winner at Le Mans, lapped the track in the new Citroen Survolt concept car. Also lapping the French track at the 2010 Le Mans Classic was the GTbyCITROEN concept car, alongside a brace of DS3s.

Opel Ampera preview

Opel has released a teaser sketch of its new five-door extended-range electric car ahead of its public debut at the Geneva Auto Show in March. Based on the Voltec powertrain and chassis architecture of Chevrolet's Volt, the Ampera promises to surpass that car in terms of style by some margin. The body appears to be nearly identical between the A- and C-pillars, but the deformed horseshoe-shaped headlamp design and two-bar grille come straight from the 2007 Flextreme concept, as do the car's tree-branch alloy wheels.