Quarter Midget Stanley Motor Plate on 2040-parts.com

Skoda Octavia wins 'everyday car' accolade

THE SKODA Octavia vRS has been awarded the ‘Best Everyday Car of the Year’ gong by a leading men’s lifestyle magazine. Judges on FHM’s panel were impressed by the hot Octavia’s interior space, family-friendly practicality, impressive performance and striking style. Its price also struck a chord, with an entry figure of £22,990 0n the road putting it well below less spacious alternatives.

New Jaguar XJ: The Paris video

Jaguar has produced a moody video of the new XJ in Paris Lucy Jordan lamented that she’d ‘Never ride through Paris in a sports car with the warm wind in her hair’. But if she ever had (apart from in her imaginings) she’d have realised it is – as many romantic notions are – a bit of a ‘mare. Smelly, noisy, uncomfortable and rather bad for your car’s paintwork.

Jaguar Land Rover open new engineering test centre in Dubai

Jaguar Land Rover are growing at a tremendous rate, and that means more and more testing of cars to make sure they can cope with the extremes of climate they’re subjected to by owners around the world. So as part of their growing test programme, JLR have extended their testing and engineering facilities in the Al Barsha area of Dubai so they can test durability, calibration and hot weather testing for heat and humidity as well as test the powertrains, chassis, HVAC and, as this is Dubai and it has plenty of sand, they can also give the Land Rover Terrain Response systems a proper workout. JLR has been hot weather testing in Dubai for more than 12 years – an area where temperatures can reach 50 degrees Celsius – and the new facility replaces a much smaller one in the same area, and joins Jaguar Land Rover’s other test facilities at the Nurburgring, Arjeplog in Sweden and Phoenix and International Falls in the States to ensure all JLR’s new cars get subjected to everything from extreme hot and cold to track work.