Ford Navigation System Cd Map 4 North Central 2005 Navteq on 2040-parts.com

New Jaguar XE OFFICIALLY launched – price from £27,000

The new Jaguar XE arrives After months of teasing, years of planning and huge sums of money spent, it’s here – the new Jaguar XE. Looking like a slightly smaller version of the XF, with an upright nose, longish bonnet, coupe-like profile and stubby tail, the XE is clearly a Jaguar – and a fairly conservative one at that – which is probably sensible when  entering such a competitive sector as the ‘Premium’ compact saloon market. But the new XE isn’t just a punt for a few sales in a new sector for Jaguar, but a car that could take Jaguar from an interesting maker of relatively low volume cars to a global ‘Premium’ car maker; nose to nose in a very competitive sector with, principally, Audi and the A4, BMW and the 3 Series and Mercedes and the C-Class.

Peugeot 308 RC Z – getting close

Peugeot 308 RC-Z caught testing (click for bigger picture) The 308 RC-Z is based on the same platform as the 308 and the Citroen C4 (which also underpins the new Citroen DS3). Power is likely to come from a choice of 1.6 litre turbos – 220bhp or 150bhp. Also likely to be on offer is an oil-burner.

BMW Z4M? Sorry, it’s the Z4 M-Sport

BMW are testing a Z4 with an M-Sport package round the Nurburgring I suppose that at least this way you can have a Z4 that looks the part- with bigger wheels and bumpers and maybe even a suspension tweak or three – without having to bother with the big price ticket or the not inconsiderable running costs. To be fair, the Z4 sDrive35i is not particularly slow. It will manage to get to 60 mph in around 5.0 seconds; handles well and looks so much better than the Z3 did.