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BMW to offer rear-wheel drive X3 SUV

Most BMW X3s spend a negligible amount of time off road - apart from crunching across Middle England's gravel driveways - so BMW has seen fit to release a version that ditches the all-paw capacity and reverts to classic rear-wheel drive. While it's still going to be some way from a classic rear-drive Ultimate Driving Machine, the X3 sDrive18d is the cheapest and most economical way into X3 ownership. You'll be able to get your hands on one from £28,580 when it arrives in the UK in the autumn of 2012.

CAR tech: what's next for car interior design?

Your new car could soon be as thoughtful, powerful and communicative as KITT from the Knight Rider TV series. That’s the ultimate expression of the connected car, a trend which is intensifying rapidly. Over the next five years, car cockpits will be able to relay more information on bigger, multiple screens and through the windscreen, and you’ll be able to give commands far more intuitively thanks to voice recognition and gesture control software.

'Monster' Tajima breaks his own record at Pikes Peak International Hill Climb

Nobuhiro "Monster" Tajima used the extra pavement to his advantage and smashed his old Pikes Peak International Hill Climb record by more than 10 seconds on June 26, with a finishing time of 9 minutes, 51.278 seconds. Tajima's old record of 10 minutes, 1.408 seconds was set in 2007. Hyundai driver Rhys Millen came in second in the Unlimited class with a time of 10 minutes, 9.24 seconds.