3/8 Inch Bronze Pintle Mounts Bracket Brass Gudgeon Sailboat Sail (#1631) on 2040-parts.com

Superb wins Tow Car of the Year

THE SKODA SUPERB Estate has been crowned Tow Car of the Year by the Caravan Club, beating off competition from 40 other entrants including Range Rover and Jaguar. Commenting on the Superb’s ability, the judges remarked: ‘With a loading limit of 100kg on the roof, 80kg on the towball and a boot that scored maximum marks, it’s a very tough act to follow. You wouldn’t know you were towing a caravan.’ Skoda also won the £16,000-£20,000 category with the new Octavia 1.2 TSI, which was praised for its pulling power with such a small engine.

Porsche Panamera hits the heights in Shanghai

A Porsche Panamera on its way to the 94th floor of the World Financial Centre in Shanghai [ad#ad-1] The stories of car makers doing daft things with cars to garner a bit of publicity have been rarer of late. Which, considering the sombre mood of car makers and the car buying public in recent months, is no real surprise. Even Motor Shows have been relatively sombre affairs (the Detroit Motor Show was particularly muted in 2009), but China is still booming, and the Shanghai Motor Show has been pretty much an old fashioned, glitzy affair.

Happy 58th birthday, Chevrolet Corvette

Fifty-eight years ago, on June 30, 1953, the first production Chevrolet Corvette rolled off the temporary assembly line in Flint, Mich. This was just six months after the Corvette made its world debut at the 1953 GM Motorama at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City. The Flint line would build 300 copies of the '53 Corvette--all of them white, with red interiors and black folding tops.