Yamaha Wave Raider Venture 760 Twin Dual Carburetors on 2040-parts.com

Driven: Volkswagen Passat CC GT

Elegant and refined. Forty years ago these two words would not have been used to describe the Beetles bought in droves by the counterculture in the US; a symbol of the hippy movement and the definitive people's car, designed at a time when Germany sought to put people in motion. With the Passat CC, however, Volkswagen is indeed making a sharp move away from the ‘volks wagen', and these two words rolled off the tongues of those who saw the car in all three countries we drove through on our winter holiday.

Ford Focus goes SEMA mad

A total of seven Ford Focus at the 2011 SEMA Show There’s nothing American petrolheads (perhaps we should say gearheads) like more than tarting up a car. Which explains why the relatively sensible Ford Focus is being pimped to within an inch of its life for this year’s SEMA show. The SEMA Motor Show is a trade-only gathering – despite which it gets around 50k visitors – which the organisers call the “premier automotive specialty products trade event – in the world.” It attracts trade visitors from across the globe to see parts, tools and components and the ‘SEMA’ special cars brought along by car makers and car modifiers.

BMW M1 Hommage to show at Melbourne

[ad#ad-1] BMW has announced that it is going to use its M1 Hommage (or Homage, if you’re not German) as the centre piece of it’s stand at the Melbourne Motor Show in February. The BMW M1 Hommage was created last year to celebrate 30 years from the M1 road car creation in 1978, and was developed by BMW’s M Division. The M1 Hommage takes many styling cues from the original M1, such as the air vents on the bonnet, the louvres on the rear window and the round decals at the extremes of the wings, but makes a distinctly 21st century take on the original.