Honda Accord Door Handle, Exterior Sdn, Driver Front, Painted, 03-07 on 2040-parts.com

SEAT Leon X-Perience price & spec – costs from £24,385

The ‘Allroad’ SEAt Leon X-Perience goes on sale. SEAT hasn’t got round to building its first SUV, but the new SEAT Leon X-Perience is a half-way step – for SEAT and its customers – with added butchness and off-road pretensions in a high-riding estate car. SEAT has gone the usual ‘Allroad’ route for the X-Perience by fitting new bumpers, adding skid plates, extra plastic cladding and pumping up the ride height to give an estate that actually looks quite alright and, with 4WD and diff locks, can actually walk some of the walk.

GM disbands unit that creates high-performance vehicles

General Motors, focusing on mainstream products in a battle to survive, has scrapped a unit that produced high-performance vehicles. GM on Wednesday disbanded High Performance Vehicle Operations, which is based at the company's suburban Detroit technical center, and redeployed its engineers, spokesman Vince Muniga said. "All high-performance projects are on indefinite hold," Muniga said.

Crunch watch Jan 09: the auto industry in crisis

By Tim Pollard, Ben Pulman and Gareth Evans Motor Industry 30 January 2009 12:39 Friday 30 January 2009• Honda is about to close the Swindon factory for four months when Friday's shifts are finished; the shutdown will affect 2500 of the 3700 staff, who will receive full pay for two months and then 60% pay for the next eight weeks (BBC News)• Porsche has announced a sharp drop in sales and likely profits. It forecasts a 27% drop in 911, Boxster, Cayman and Cayenne sales to around 34,000 units in the six months to the end of January 2009 (Financial Times, subscription required)• Ford wants Washington to do more to stimulate car sales, after posting a record loss of nearly $14.6 billion earlier this week (Detroit News)• Honda's quarterly profit has crashed by 90% – forcing the Japanese car maker to halve its annual profit target (Detroit Free Press)Thursday 29 January 2009• Ford of Europe is a bright spot in the Blue Oval's quarterly results today, making $1.06 billion pre-tax profit in 2008 (up from $997m in 2007). It's the first profit of more than $1bn since 1989 (Automotive News Europe, subscription required)• Volvo suffered a 'disastrous 2008' with a pre-tax loss of $1.46bn.