New Skoda Octavia vRS hatch & estate revealed

The 2013 Skoda Octavia vRS has been revealed (vRS hatch pictured) The Skoda Octavia vRS – the latest version of Skoda’s quick and appealing take on the VW Golf GTI – has been unveiled ahead of its debut at the Goodwood FoS in July, and it looks a cracker. Available as either a hatchback or estate – and as a diesel or a petrol – the Octavia vRS manages to repackage the Golf GTI and Golf GTD in to one Skoda, offering good performance (the vRS is a bit slower than the GTI to 62mph at 6.8 seconds but has a 2mph higher top speed), good looks and the promise of prices starting not much above £20k. The petrol vRS gets the Golf GTI’s 217bhp 2.0 litre TSI and the diesel vRS the 181bhp 2.0 litre TFI from the Golf GTD, both with a 6-speed manual gearbox as standard and a six-speed DSG as option, sports suspension, XDS differential, quicker steering and multi-link rear suspension.

New Mazda3 i-stop announced

The Mazda3 i-stop has been released utilising a new type of stop-start technology We won’t go on about our review of the new Mazda 3 as you’ve heard it all before, but it is a very good car. And the addition of a model with stop-start certainly adds something new to the range, particularly for buyers who drive most of the time in town. Mazda label this as part of their ‘Sustainable Zoom-Zoom’ strategy.

Infiniti plans full-court press for March Madness

Infiniti plans to keep its name--and especially its new M hybrid sedan--in front of basketball fans for the next few weeks as a sponsor of NCAA Men's Basketball Division I championship. Under a multi-network advertising deal with NCAA, CBS Sports and Turner Sports, Infiniti will run a total of 170 TV spots of up to 60 seconds each over the next four weeks of March Madness basketball playoffs on CBS, TBS, TNT and truTV networks, says Kathy Roznowski, a marketing manager at Infiniti. Of those 170 spots, at least 100 will be for the new hybrid sedan, the luxury brand's first, starting March 17.