GT Academy winner Heitkotter's next step is the 24 Hours of Dubai

It all culminates in January at the 24 Hours of Dubai: That's when video-game player and GT Academy winner Bryan Heitkotter will race, professionally, with European GT Academy winner Jann Mardenborough in a Nissan 370Z. The GT Academy was a contest that started last December in which Gran Turismo 5 players competed for a seat in a real race car. Thousands entered, 32 players rose to the top, and 16 of those were invited to a seven-day whirlwind racing and evaluation program at the Silverstone circuit in the United Kingdom.

Volkswagen CrossBlue Coupe photos arrive early

We didn’t expect the CrossBlue Coupe to look quite as dramatically ‘squashed’ as the design sketches, and it doesn’t. But it does look like a decidedly rakish SUV with a distinctly more coupe look than the full-sized CrossBlue SUV we saw at Detroit in January. Apart from being sleeker than its boxy sibling, the CrossBlue Coupe is also less compendious, and drops the full 7-seats the Crossblue had in favour of a 5-set layout.

Mitsubishi returns to Pikes Peak with all-new MiEV Evolution III

Mitsubishi is back again with an all-new version of its electric hill-climbing machine, the MiEV Evolution III. A pair of the fully electric race cars will compete in the 92nd running of the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb on June 29, held just outside of Colorado Springs, Colo. Replacing the MiEV Evolution II that came in second in the EV division in last year's, “Race to the Clouds,” the MiEV Evolution III comes with a full force of upgrades that look to bump it to first place.