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Meet the Porsche Macan small SUV

The small Porsche SUV that goes on sale about 18 months will wear the Macan nameplate, the German automaker said on Thursday. Until now, the SUV project had been known by the code name Cajun, created from the concept of “Cayenne Junior.” Porsche says Macan is “derived from the Indonesian word for tiger and combines suppleness, power, fascination and dynamics.” The Porsche Macan will share a platform with the Audi Q5 and will be built at the Porsche plant in Leipzig, Germany, that now builds the Cayenne. Porsche is spending $650 million to expand the Leipzig plant, adding a body shop and a paint shop.

VW at Geneva Motor Show: 2010 VW Sharan

Volkaswagen has revealed the 2010 VW Sharan at the Geneva Motor Show Last week we reported on VW’s little German tease of the 2010 Sharan on the VW web site in Germany, coyly showing just a partial front end and one wheel. But a week on there’s no such reticence with a full reveal of VW’s big people carrier at Geneva. The last generation of the Sharan shared a platform with Ford’s Galaxy, but the 2010 Volkswagen Sharan is a purely VW venture -based as it is on VW’s flexible MQB platform – and comes complete with the standard fashion accessory for a people carrier of sliding rear doors, and a more flexible seven-seat layout.

MG Design Centre opens in UK

The opening of MG's new design center this week at the historic production site of Longbridge, Birmingham, England was both an incredible and credible occasion. Incredible, because the brand looked dead in the water after the debacle of MG Rover's collapse in 2005 and even after various Chinese takeovers, its UK operation seemed destined to play no more than a tokenistic bit part. And thankfully credible too, because now all of MG's global design will genuinely be led from this new facility in the epicentre of England's traditional motoring heartland.