09 Impala Light Gray Passenger Side Sun Visor/shade 3i7847 1508490 on 2040-parts.com

VW Polo R confirmed for 2013

VW Polo WRC makes the case for the 4WD VW Polo R We speculated a year ago that the Polo GTI wouldn’t be the top of the Polo tree, and that Volkswagon would roll out the VW Polo R in 2012, but perhaps with FWD instead of the 4WD its big brother, the Golf R, enjoys. But just a few months later it seemed clear that we would end up getting a 4WD Polo R at some point after Audi lost its bottle at the last minute and pulled the Audi S1 badge off a FWD A1, instead calling it the Audi A1 1.4 TFSI. That change of heart by Audi – saving the S1 badge for a quattro S1 – meant that a quattro platform would be developed for the S1, and as the A1 uses the Polo platform it meant a 4WD platform would be available for the Polo too.

2012 Porsche 911 7-speed gearbox in action +video

2012 Porsche 911 7-speed gearbox video below Some of us are old enough – just –  to remember when a 3-speed gearbox was normal. And, quite often, located on the column. Cars like the Vauxhall Cresta and Ford Zephyr had them, but they now belong to a completely different world to the one inhabited by the 7-speed manual gearbox in the new Porsche 911.

Ferrari 612 Shooting Brake NOT the new 612

Ferrari 612 Shooting Brake Spy shot Last week we ran a story about the replacement for Ferrari’s four-seat supercar, the Ferrari 612 Scaglietti. The basic premise was that Ferrari would be bringing the replacement for the 612 Scaglietti to the Geneva Motor Show in March, and that it would feature a new, 650bhp V12 engine, and 4×4 platform and be a Shooting Brake. All of which was a cobbling together from bits of information we’ve received when we started to dig around for information after Ferrari chairman Luca di Montezemolo recently said there will be a “very different Ferrari” at Geneva.