Dorman C660236 Brake Cable-cable - Parking Brake on 2040-parts.com

Alpina B5 Bi-Turbo (2011) launches

The Alpina B5 Bi-Turbo 2011 debuted at Goodwood If you went down to the Goodwood Festival of Speed over the weekend you may well have come across Alpina’s latest offering – the Alpina B5 Bi-Turbo – which, following the news yesterday that BMW have retired the current generation (E60) M5 and that you’ll have to wait intil next year for the new M5 – is the only way to hop in to a brand new ‘Hot’ 5 series for at least the next 9 months. Not only is the Alpina B5 the only really quick 5 series on the market now, it will also be a lot less ubiquitous in the long run than BMW’s own M5. A lot to be said for that.

Bentley SUV will create a new niche

The Bentley SUV (EXP 9 F pictured) will create a new market sector. We all saw the Bentley SUV when it arrive two years ago at the Geneva Motor show, and the general consensus was along the lines of ‘What a truck’. But Bentley have taken that reaction on board and are busy redesigning the looks of their SUV (well, the exterior anyway – the interior was lovely) to give it a more appealing look, one probably more biased towards an SUV version of the Continental Series rather than the Mulsanne.

New Mercedes A45 AMG has 105 years of 4WD on its side

With the new Mercedes A45 AMG on the horizon – complete with 4WD – Mercedes chart the history of all wheel drive on their vehicles. We tend to think of 4WD road cars as a modern innovation, and certainly very few 4WD road cars hit the road in a mainstream way much before the 1980s (the Jensen FF was hardly mainstream before someone points out that was in the 1960s). But the history of 4WD goes back, certainly in the case of Mercedes, a surprising 105 years when Daimler built the Dernburg-Wagen, a 4WD vehicle that not only got all-wheel drive but all wheel steering too.