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Fiesta becomes UK's all-time best seller

THE FORD FIESTA has become Britain's all-time top selling car. Ford said Fiesta sales had now topped 4,115,000, taking the model past the previous record holder, the Ford Escort . First launched in 1976, and initially made at Dagenham in Essex, the Fiesta has led the small-car sector in the UK for 27 of the 37 years and has been Britain's annual best-selling car since 2009 when it overtook the Ford Focus.

Toyota ends powertrain deal with Tesla

To the surprise of no one, Toyota has announced the end of a partnership with Tesla that gave rise to the slow-selling RAV4 EV, which will be replaced by a fuel cell car next year. Toyota has said that it can't meet California's zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) mandate profitably with electric cars, but it thinks it can make money, or at least not lose so much of it, with fuel cells. Toyota signed a $100 million joint development deal in 2011 with Tesla, to build powertrains for its RAV4 EV.

Vauxhall / Opel Adam spied undisguised

The GM rival for the MINI and Fiat 500 – the Vauxhall and Opel Adam – has been caught undisguised on a photo shoot in Spain. The last news we had of what we thought was going to be the Opel Junior was GM’s announcement that it would actually be the Opel Adam – named after Opel’s founder – and, oddly, also the Vauxhall Adam. So far we’ve only seen the usually prototypes with swirly camouflage floating around Europe’s roads, but now we get the first shots of the Adam grabbed undisguised on a photoshoot in Spain.