2013 Honda Rancher 420 Fi Unit on 2040-parts.com

MG Design Centre opens in UK

The opening of MG's new design center this week at the historic production site of Longbridge, Birmingham, England was both an incredible and credible occasion. Incredible, because the brand looked dead in the water after the debacle of MG Rover's collapse in 2005 and even after various Chinese takeovers, its UK operation seemed destined to play no more than a tokenistic bit part. And thankfully credible too, because now all of MG's global design will genuinely be led from this new facility in the epicentre of England's traditional motoring heartland.

VW Golf GTI Cabriolet at Geneva. But what about the Golf R Cabriolet?

VW Golf R Cabriolet (left) & Golf GTI Cabriolet Reports say the VW Golf GTI Cabriolet will debut at the Geneva Motor Show next month. But what’s happened to the VW Golf R Cabriolet? The Worthersee Tour is a huge festival of pimped and preened VW cars held every year in Germany.

Volvo testing new safety features

Volvo outlined three new technologies that it says will help make the Volvos of the future a good deal safer: autonomous driving, “Intersection Support” and animal detection. Volvo says it's tailoring technologies to the way people drive, by which it means poorly. The company claims that “surveys from three different research institutes in the United States reveal that modern drivers spend 25 to 30 percent of their time behind the wheel doing other things, such as focusing on mobile communication.” Volvo's new technologies are said take this into account and “provide the driver with the right support at all times.” By using a camera and radar, future Volvos will be able to follow the car in front while driving in slow traffic using an autonomous-driving function.