05 06 07 08 09 10 Cobalt L. Left Driver Lh Quarter Panel Assembly Coupe Red on 2040-parts.com

New Skoda Octavia Scout price and spec – costs from £25,315

New Skoda Octavia Scout costs from £25,315 The new Skoda Octavia Scout arrived at the Geneva Motor Show in the Spring, bringing an ‘Allroad’ version of the latest Skoda Octavia Combi (Estate) to the market. As with all estate cars with offroad pretensions, the Octavia Scout comes with a more butch set of bumpers and a more purposeful nose, black cladding for the door sills and wheel arches, a new set of alloys, a raised ride height and a few tweaks for the interior so it all looks more than capable of taking on a muddy boot sale car park. The Scout comes with a choice of two 2.0 litre TDI engines at launch, with a lower powered, 148bhp with a six-speed manual and a more powerful, 182bhp version, getting a six-speed DSG gearbox, both of which return official economy of 55.4mpg (although, oddly, the lower-powered gets emissions of 129g/km and the more powerful 134g/km).

Flashback: Pontiac killed on April 27, 2009

It was precisely two years ago today--April 27, 2009--that Pontiac met its demise. In hindsight, the decision made a lot of sense for General Motors, which six weeks later would file for bankruptcy. But at the time, many enthusiasts were more than a bit upset that 80 years of Pontiac--once the third-best-selling brand in the United States--was set for the scrap yard.

General Motors will prep plants in 2012 for next-generation pickups

General Motors will begin retooling assembly plants next year to build the next generation of its full-sized pickups, GM's U.S. sales chief Don Johnson said. "We have some scheduled plant downtime in 2012 as we convert to the next generation of our pickups," he said.