Hyundai steps up new model push

By Phil McNamara Motor Industry 11 September 2006 10:45 Hyundai's bid to gatecrash the world's top five car-makers will continue with two crucial new models: a seven-seat SUV and a mid-size hatch. In 2007, the aggressive Korean car maker will wade into Europe's biggest market – the C-segment – with a family hatch, and launch a big, seven-seat crossover SUV Stateside. The crossover – captured here by our spy photographers – will be named Veracruz, continuing Hyundai's habit of adopting Mexican names.

One lap of the Web: $52 million Ferrari 250 GTO, Alfa Romeo Montreal for sale and more bizarro engines

-- Even as the hammer fell on Juan Manuel Fangio's $30 million Mercedes-Benz W196R, we knew that that car wasn't the most expensive one ever sold -- it was merely the most expensive car sold at auction. Other cars were reported to have traded for a bit more in private sales. But now we have word of a car that absolutely blows the sale price of Fangio's little Silver Arrow out of the water: a 1963 Ferrari 250 GTO that sold to an undisclosed buyer for $52 million.

Car production increases again

THE SOCIETY of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) said UK manufacturers built 91,282 cars in August, up 16.2%, or 12,705, on the same period in 2012, leaving year-to-date volumes 3.1% ahead of 2012, at 984,545. The figures showed 20,298 cars were made for the home market this year, up 21.1%, while 70,984 were for export, up 14.8%. SMMT chief executive Mike Hawes said: "The past 12-months has been one of the most productive since late 2008." Samuel Tombs, of consultancy Capital Economics, said the CBI figures showed the manufacturing sector "continuing to go from strength to strength".