5x5 Hub Assembly Nascar Racing Race Car on 2040-parts.com

New car sales in UK still growing – up 14.8% April 2013. Driven by PPI Claims?

It is quite hard to fathom just how UK new car sales (well, registrations) continue to rise inexorably against a backdrop of otherwise stagnant economic activity, but they do. April 2013 has seen a total of 163,357 new car registrations, up a huge 14.8 per cent on April 2012 and the best figure since 2008, and these sales figures are not being driven by fleet buyers but by private motorists – private sector registrations grew by 32.3 per cent in April and are up by 15.2 per cent year to date. Not surprisingly, it’s the Superminis that are performing strongly – although all sectors are showing a rise – and it’s the Ford Fiesta that continues to be the best seller in the UK with sales of over 8,000 in April and over 42,000 so far in 2013, and the rise of superminis has also seen an increase in sales of petrol-engined cars thanks to the wave of small capacity, frugal petrol options.

Hyundai i40 / Sonata launches

The new Sonata / i40 has launched in Korea The Sonata – which will be the Hyundai i40 in Europe – is yet another very convincing new model from the Koreans. Gone is the very boring old Sonata and in comes the very European style i40. It is a somewhat derivative design – from the  ’Coupe Saloon’ school of design – but that’s a positive for a budget car maker like Hyundai.

Finalists announced in exterior phase of CDN-GM Interactive Design competition

The exterior phase of the CDN-GM Interactive Design competition closed on the November 7th, with over 150 entries from design students based in the USA and Canada, making it our most popular interactive competition phase so far. After the press days of the recent LA Auto Show, judges and mentors from GM, along with our competition partners Dassault Systèmes, Faurecia and SRG Global, gathered at GM's North Hollywood advanced design studio to pick the finalists. Those chosen will be invited to attend the 2012 NAIAS in Detroit, along with finalists from the interiors phase, and on the second press day, interiors and exterior winners will be announced for each brand.