Peugeot-designed Santa's sleigh (2010)

It's that time of year again when CAR commissions leading car designers to pen their vision of Santa's sleigh. First up in 2010's sleighfest is Peugeot's new Christmas transport. The new Peugeot sleigh adopts all the latest design trends straight from the design bible of Gilles Vidal, the 38-year-old design director in Paris.

GM expands brake-override safety feature

General Motors is significantly expanding the use of a brake-override safety feature in its cars through the end of 2012. GM announced on Monday that it will add the software, which it also calls “enhanced smart-pedal technology,” in all of its passenger cars with automatic transmissions and electronic throttle control. The change will reduce power to the engine when both the throttle and brakes are pressed at the same time.

New Jaguar XE OFFICIALLY launched – price from £27,000

The new Jaguar XE arrives After months of teasing, years of planning and huge sums of money spent, it’s here – the new Jaguar XE. Looking like a slightly smaller version of the XF, with an upright nose, longish bonnet, coupe-like profile and stubby tail, the XE is clearly a Jaguar – and a fairly conservative one at that – which is probably sensible when  entering such a competitive sector as the ‘Premium’ compact saloon market. But the new XE isn’t just a punt for a few sales in a new sector for Jaguar, but a car that could take Jaguar from an interesting maker of relatively low volume cars to a global ‘Premium’ car maker; nose to nose in a very competitive sector with, principally, Audi and the A4, BMW and the 3 Series and Mercedes and the C-Class.