Kia sell their 500,000th car in the UK – a cee’d ‘4’ 1.6 CRDi

Dale & Amy Pollard receive the keys to Kia’s 500,000th UK car Kia arrived in the UK in 1991 as a seller of budget cars, but in recent years Kia, along with sister company Hyundai, has moved very much in to the mainstream, with a range of credible cars that now sell on merit, not just price. That turn round for Kia has seen sales rising strongly to the point where they have now sold 5000,000 Kias since the marque first arrived in the UK. The milestone car is a cee’d ‘4’ 1.6 CRDi and has been delivered to a married couple in Leicester - Dale and Amy Pollard – who got a bit of special treatment from their Kia dealers - Kia Sandicliffe – at a handover ceremony attended by Stuart Wardle from Kia and Sandicliffe’s John Marsh.

McLaren 650S (2014) first official pictures

By Phil McNamara First Official Pictures 17 February 2014 13:00 Punchier, a few kilos lighter, more incisive to drive yet more luxurious, McLaren has overhauled the 12C to create the 650S. The new supercar – which makes the 12C look obsolete – is in production now, and will cost punters around £195,000 for the coupe. A folding hard-top spider will also be available, for around £215,000. In a strategy reminiscent of Aston Martin’s continuous improvement of the DB9 and its transformation into the Vanquish, McLaren has revamped the carbonfibre 12C with 25% new parts.

VW Group planning 10-speed DSG, new powerful diesel engine & more plug-in hybrids

The end of the internal combustion engine is nigh, they say, as the world tries to clean up its environmental act and works towards a goal of electric motors to power our personal transport. But car makers are fighting that belief by extracting more power for less fuel from ICE engines, and there’s still a very long way to go before the ICE engine is consigned to the history books. Volkswagen has already reduced the fuel consumption of both their diesel and petrol engines by 30 per cent since 2000 and plan a further reduction of 15 per cent by 2020.