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Autos to overtake manuals

By Jack Carfrae Motor Industry 28 February 2007 07:39 Automatic transmissions will finally overtake manuals as the top-selling gearbox choice in 2007. Autos have been long established as the more popular option Stateside and in Japan, but it seems that Europe has now finally caught the two-pedal bug. With the ever-increasing popularity of semi-automatic gearboxes (Tiptronic, DSG, CVT and a whole flood of other acronyms), it isn’t hard to see why.

Zonda Cinque Roadster revealed

Pagani has released the final Zonda - the Zonda Cinque Roadster We already know how rigid the Zonda is from the Zonda F Roadster, so Pagani haven’t had to add half a ton of iron girders to the Cinque to compensate for chopping the top off. So you will still have a car that can deliver 0-62mph in 3.4 seconds from its 678bhp V12 Mercedes-sourced engine, and on up to almost 220mph. Just like the Coupe Cinque, only five Cinque Roadsters will be built (Cinque – Five – gettit?!) and each will set back their lucky owner €1.1 million + tax.

Volvo’s ‘Drive Me’ is the world’s first large-scale autonomous driving pilot project

Yes, you’ll be able to chat on the phone when the Volvo does the driving for you Like it or not, we’re rapidly moving to the point where autonomous cars will be the norm, with the driver only being involved in the act of driving by choice. Volvo – unsurprisingly with their stated goal of making sure no one dies in a Volvo in future – is at the forefront of the move to autonomous driving, and have teamed up with the Swedish Transportation Administration, the Swedish Transport Agency, Lindholmen Science Park and the City of Gothenburg in a project called ‘Drive Me - Self-driving cars for sustainable mobility’. The project kicks off next year with customer research and the development of the necessary technology and Volvo aims to have 100 autonomous cars on the roads of Gothenburg by 2017, where they’ll be driving round approximately 50 kms of selected roads, including commuter roads, motorways and regular queues.