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News watch December 2012: today's auto industry news

Welcome to CAR Magazine's news aggregator as we round up the daily stories in the auto industry. Top tip: news summaries are added from the top hour-by-hour Monday 31 December 2012• Despite reports earlier this month that shareholders valued Mercedes-Benz at half that of its luxury rival BMW, Mercedes CEO Dieter Zetsche has remained bullish about his ambitious targets for the carmaker's growth. 'I am confident that we will be ahead of our rivals by 2020 at the latest,' he told German newspaper Boersen-Zeitung in an interview.

Auto-safety history gets its place in the Smithsonian

Smithsonian museum officials say their new collection of auto-safety objects dating to the 1930s is about America's love affair with its cars. But really it's about our passion for, well, staying alive. While some enthusiasts might question whether their cars should be braking for them, it's hard to quarrel with most of this technology.

New Year drink-drive warning for revellers

SOME revellers will drink so much to see in the New Year that they might be over the legal driving limit for nearly all of January 1, the AA has warned. As many as 21% of people plan to drink at least 10 units of alcohol at New Year's Eve celebrations, potentially putting them still over the limit by 12 noon on New Year's Day. And the AA/Populus survey of more than 21,000 drivers also revealed that 2% would drink to such an extent that they risked being over the limit as late as 10pm on New Year's Day.