71-74 E-body Rallye Dash, Rallye Light Bar, Rallye Harness Cuda Challenger on 2040-parts.com

2012 European Car of the Year shortlist announced

The shortlist for the 2012 European Car of the Year award has been announced today. There were 35 cars on the original list, but the first round of voting from the 59 jury members (including CAR Magazine’s editor Phil McNamara, and our European correspondent Georg Kacher) has whittled the list down to just seven. They are… • Citroen DS5• Fiat Panda• Focus Focus• Opel (Vauxhall) Ampera/Chevrolet Volt• Range Rover Evoque• Toyota Yaris• Volkswagen Up There will now be a second round of test drives, before the European Car of the Year jurors submit their scores and a winner is announced live at the Geneva motor show on 5 March 2012.

New Vauxhall Astra Roadster preview

Rendering of the Vauxhall Astra Roadster With the new Vauxhall Astra starting to be pushed by Vauxhall ahead of its official launch at Frankfurt in September, thoughts are now turning to what derivatives of the new Astra are to come. Vauxhall are already committed to the three door hatchback and the estate as the follow up after the launch, but an obvious contender is an open-topped Astra. And if these renderings are to be believed it will be a bit of a show-stopper.

Hyundai beefs up its WRC team

Hyundai revealed last year that they’re preparing to take on the World Rally Championship (WRC) from 2014 when a rally car based on the i20 will take to the world rally stage to cast some sport fairy dust on Hyundai’s showroom cars. At that time we had little information about the team, but in January we learnt that Hyundai had appointed Michel Nandan to head up their WRC efforts, a good move as Nandon was the technical director for the Peugeot WRC team until 2005, so he knows his stuff. Now we learn that Hyundai is beefing up its WRC team as it prepares for a full season of WRC in 2014.