1980 Buick Chev Olds Pontiac Niehoff Stop-light Switch on 2040-parts.com

The fall and rise of the budget car

Twenty years ago, the classic bargain brands like Lada seemed to be going the same way as the Soviet empire that spawned them. Woefully dated and badly made, only a weirdo would have bought a new Lada rather than a second-hand model from Ford, Vauxhall or VW. However, one of the big trends in the car industry today is the re-emergence of bargain cars.

Autoweek in review: This week's wrap-up

--MotoGP's Marco Simoncelli died on Sunday in a crash on the second lap of the Malaysian Motorcycle Grand Prix, when his helmet came off and he was hit by other riders. Officials canceled the race. -- The Mazda Takeri concept will replace the Mazda 6 sedan within the next couple of years.

Bluebird Electric aiming for UK Land Speed Record

Bluebird Electric You’d hope that anyone of any age would associate ‘Bluebird’ with ‘Campbell’, but as many of our schools don’t seem too keen on anything that may be even remotely considered part of Britain’s history, perhaps not. So we’ll just throw in that Sir Malcolm Campbell drove a variety of Bluebird (or Blue Bird) cars to new land speed records on Pendine Sands in the 1920s and his son, Donald Campbell, matched his father’s achievements with world speed records on both land and water – the only man to have held land and water speed records at the same time. And he too used the Bluebird moniker for his record-breaking transport of choice. Fast forward the best part of fifty years and it’s the grandson of Sir Malcolm – Don Wales – who’s plotting to take the Bluebird Electric to a new UK Land Speed Record, and planning to make a start on that quest at Pendine Sands (a location Top Gear fans will probably recognise – and was it Pendine Sands on the new Torchwood series last week?).