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Ellesmere Port's bid to build Ampera hits snags

By Rob Golding Motor Industry 09 October 2009 15:02 Prime minister Gordon Brown’s personal crusade to get Vauxhall's version of the Chevrolet Volt petrol-electric plug-in hybrid – the Ampera – built in Britain's Ellesmere Port factory in 2012 is a dream delayed, CAR can disclose today.News that the UK Astra plant is the best in Europe, that the Astra's Delta platform will underpin the Ampera, and that Volt will be on US sale from 2010 had been taken to mean that Vauxhall would be churning out the cars in the north west within three years.But the prospect of an electric car industry growing up around the run-down Merseyside manufacturing site is not imminent, CAR has learned.'No Ampera to be built in Europe before 2015'Vauxhall insiders have made it clear that the car to be known as the Vauxhall/Opel Ampera in Europe will be an import from the US for at least five years. One senior planner told us: 'The US will be the sole source of Amperas until at least 2015.'Bob Lutz, GM's former product supremo who recently came out of retirement as a PR, said that the low value of the dollar made the US an ideal site for the manufacturing of export cars. And with forecast sticker prices of the range-extender electric car standing at a scary £35,000+, every price saving is vital to its marketability.The European market also needs time to get its electricity recharge infrastructure in place before it is worth making cars onshore in volume, GM high-ups point out.

Pininfarina design celebrated in London exhibition

The work of Italian design house Pininfarina will be celebrated in a dedicated exhibition as part of the International Architecture and Design Showcase, set to take place during the 2012 London Olympics. From 22 June to 15 July the ‘Pininfarina in London' exhibition will display the most prestigious products made in Italy including a Ferrari FF and a Maserati GranTurismo during the inauguration. Four sculptures in cedar wood – made by Riva 1920 – represent four Pininfarina design icons: the Cisitalia of 1947, the Dino of 1967, the Birdcage 75th of 2005 and the Cambiano, the concept car launched by Pininfarina in Geneva this year.

BMW M5 (2011) the first official video

BMW has started its hype generator for the upcoming M5, with this first online teaser video. I'm at the office and can't watch the footage right now – what can we see of the new BMW M5?  It's officially called a 'first glimpse', and in and amongst shots of a partially-camouflaged prototype M5 roaring through a tunnel and powersliding along a snowy test track, M Division boss Dr Kay Siegler appears talking about the new car in the workshop of M HQ. Segler introduces the new M5 as 'a bold business car, which at the touch of a button, becomes a sports car'. The new BMW M5 - the lowdown The new F10M-spec M5 is downsizing from the E60's 5.0-litre V10 for the same 550bhp 4.4 litre twin-turbo V8 found in the X5M and X6M. But rather than the torque convertor autos used by the SUV pair, the new motor is mated to a beefed-up version of the the seven-speed M-DCT double-clutch transmission currently serving in the M3.