Mercedes Front Emblem 1298880116 on 2040-parts.com

Lamborghini LM00X SUV on the way?

The Lamborghini Conquisto SUV Concept (by Belgian designer David Cardoso) This is an old chestnut that crops up every month or four – Lamborghini to make new SUV – probably because Lamborghini already has an SUV in its history with the frankly other-world LMoo2. Still, with Lamborghini now very much a part of the VW Group (what happened to the revival of Auto Union as a group name?) there’s starting to be more credence to the guesswork. This time it’s Auto Express doing some guesswork (industry insider said…) and they reckon that Lamborghini are going to take the underpinnings of the Porsche Cajun (which is basically the same as the Q5), shove in the new 4.0-litre twin-turbo V8 currently being developed jointly by Audi and Bentley and call it the Lamborghini LM00X (or LM003 or LM004 or LM005…).

Insurance group lists its Top Safety Picks

After increasing its standards for 2011 models, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety says that 66 vehicles--more than double the 2010 total--rate as best in the industry at protecting passengers from front, side, rollover and rear crashes. Only 27 vehicles qualified last year after the group, funded by the insurance industry, required that vehicles pass a roof-strength test to earn a good rating, claiming that stronger roofs would reduce the risk of serious or fatal injury by 50 percent in a rollover accident. The most mentioned carmakers on the 2011 list are Hyundai/Kia and Volkswagen/Audi, both with nine vehicles to get the Top Safety Pick designation.

Volkswagen GTI Roadster for Gran Turismo uncovered – gets 496 bhp

The Volkswagen GTI Roadster (pictured) is uncovered We revealed last week that VW were making their GTI Roadster from the Gran Turismo game in to a real car for the Worthersee show, and they have. Blurring the lines between the real and the virtual (which is the way all our lives are going) Volkswagen has taken the opportunity to build a real life GTI Roadster – without the constraints of a concept heading for production – and has come up with a tw-seater open roadster that has some design cues from the Golf but is shorter and a lot lower. Those deign cues extend to a a front end that looks like a squashed GTI with its headlights and grill on show with big air intakes, all of which conspires to make the GTI Roadster look even lower, emaner and wider than it is.