Mercedes C-class shown

By Tim Pollard Motor Shows 09 March 2007 01:08 Mercedes Vision C220 Bluetec: the lowdown Mercedes' bigger, better and cleaner new C-class hogged centre stage at the DaimlerChrysler stand. The C is the bedrock of Merc's range and the company rolled out a slew of derivatives to mark the occasion - including the Vision C220 Bluetec, the first four-cylinder diesel with Merc's clean-breathing tech. Vision is a tag for Stuttgart's concepts that are a dead cert for the showrooms, so expect something very like this soon.

Tesla Model S turns in to Jaguar XF

Jaguar XF - or is it a Tesla? Tesla seem convinced – or at least they’re doing all they can to convince the public – that the Tesla Model S is a soon to be reality, despite all in the industry saying they can’t deliver what they are offering – a high-end, luxury, high-spec sports saloon with a 300 mile range – for the sort of money they claim. That money – as we learned recently – is to be $69,500 for the Tesla S with the 300 mile battery, a price that’s had many scratching their heads over how Tesla can stick enough laptop batteries in the Model S to go that far, and how they can do it at a price that’s a good thirty per cent less than the ‘Lotus-with-batteries’ Tesla Roadster.

How safe are new minicars?

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) recently tested a total of 11 minicars in its relatively new small-overlap crash test, and the Chevrolet Spark was the only one to earn an Acceptable rating. The small-overlap crash test was instituted in 2012 with the goal of better replicating real-life car crashes, most of which don't follow the pattern of traditional government crash tests. Instead of a car hitting a stationary object with 100 percent of its front making contact, the small-overlap test examines how a car behaves in a frontal impact at 40 mph where only a quarter of the car's front hits an object.