04 05 06 Nissan Sentra Engine Ecm on 2040-parts.com

Five most-watched car ads of 2011

Page views: They're life and death on the Web, and for an automaker trying to make an advertisement go viral, page views and the eyeballs viewing them are what it's all about. This year was big for the top-five viral automaker ads: Volkswagen's “The Force” spot hit 63 million views, while Fiat grabbed 27 million with its Jennifer Lopez song. The Chrysler “Imported From Detroit” Super Bowl ad was next, with 22 million views.

SEAT SUV confirmed for 2016

SEAT Compact SUV gets a green light for 2016 (SEAT IBX Concept pictured) SEAT has been threatening to build a compact SUV for years, and back in 2011 it revealed the IBX Concept (pictured above) which was the SEAT take on the Audi Q3. Now, finally, it seems VW has signed-off on SEAT’s compact SUV and the new compact SUV will hit the market in 2016, hopefully giving SEAT’s poor sales a real boost. Expected to be based on the VW MQB platform, the SEAT SUV should enable SEAT to properly compete in Europe and tap in to a market that has grown by 40 per cent in the last few years whilst SEAT’s existing market for its cars has shrunk and been compromised by a weak economy in Europe where the vast majority of SEAT’s sales are made.

Grab a ‘VAT Free’ Skoda Octavia

In yet another ‘Sign of the times’ Skoda has announced that they are now offering ‘VAT Free Octavias’ until the end of the year. No, this is not a tie-up between Alistair Darling and VW, it’s just Skoda’s way of offering a headline price decrease of a bit over 13% (less expensive to Skoda than last week for the same headline, to be fair, and there is a new model due in January!). Grab a VAT free Skoda Octavia I’m pretty sure that there will be a raft of these ‘VAT Free’ offers floating around on everything from cars to washing machines, capitalising on the fact the VAT is in the headlines.