1948 Chevy Fleetline Radio Speaker Cover 3684124 on 2040-parts.com

Land Rover Defender LXV celebrates 65 years of Land Rover

As part of the celebrations at Packington Estate – which was the original testing ground for the 1948 Defender prototypes – Land Rover are launching a celebratory Defender special edition – the Land Rover Defender LXV – based on the standard Defender and available in five different body styles and with the 2.2 litre diesel engine and 6-speed manual ’box. The Defender LXV gets the sort of toys no one could ever have envisaged on those early Defenders, including a Santorini Black or Fuji White paint job with Corris Grey roof, grille and headlight surrounds, full leather seats with orange contrast stitching, lots of ‘LXV’ badges and even the option of a Union flag on the back. John Edwards, LR’s Global Brand Director, said: Land Rover is celebrating 65 years of proud heritage.

Nissan Friend-ME – looks better than it sounds: Shanghia Motor Show

Nissan has built the Friend-ME (which must rank as one of the most useless car monikers ever) to appeal to the potentially huge market of ‘B?línghòu’ buyers, a group of buyers, born in the 1980s, who grew up as single children thanks to China’s ‘One Child’ policy. Nissan sees this group as totally reliant on their network of friends for support, and has built a car that owners can enjoy with their friends on an equal basis. So every one of the four seats gets full instrumentation - SatNav, Fuel, Speed – and an ‘Oracle Stone’ runs down the centre of the cabin which can display whatever content the occupants want from their connected Smartphones and tablets.

German new car sales drop 11 per cent – pre-reg accounts for 33.5 per cent

New car sales in Germany dropped by 11 per cent in September with pre-reg cars accounting for over a third of all sales. That drop of 11 per cent in Germany is despite deep discount offers – an average of 12.2 per cent in September – with even the previously invincible Mercedes and VW having to offer discounts of up to €3k, despite which VW’s sales fell by 20 per cent in Germany and Mercedes by 12 per cent. What’s perhaps most interesting about the decline in car sales in Germany is the number of pre-reg cars sold (pre reg cars are cars registered by dealers to hit sales targets and then sold at a discount of up to 25 per cent).