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Kia sell their 500,000th car in the UK – a cee’d ‘4’ 1.6 CRDi

Dale & Amy Pollard receive the keys to Kia’s 500,000th UK car Kia arrived in the UK in 1991 as a seller of budget cars, but in recent years Kia, along with sister company Hyundai, has moved very much in to the mainstream, with a range of credible cars that now sell on merit, not just price. That turn round for Kia has seen sales rising strongly to the point where they have now sold 5000,000 Kias since the marque first arrived in the UK. The milestone car is a cee’d ‘4’ 1.6 CRDi and has been delivered to a married couple in Leicester - Dale and Amy Pollard – who got a bit of special treatment from their Kia dealers - Kia Sandicliffe – at a handover ceremony attended by Stuart Wardle from Kia and Sandicliffe’s John Marsh.

VW Phaeton - the new one coming in 2015

A brand new Volkswagen Phaeton Mk2 will be launched in 2015, based on a new architecture being masterminded by cousins Audi. Dubbed VW631, the new VW Phaeton will be based on MLM Evo (modular longitudinal matrix) which makes provision for a plug-in hybrid option, an aluminium-intensive body structure and a much more advanced and less nose-heavy dynamic layout. Although VW chairman Martin Winterkorn has in the past black-flagged the Avantissimo (A8-based) and the Passat Variant Plus (A6-derived), there is still a lot to be said for a second more practical bodystyle in addition to the four-door notch which is almost compulsory in this segment.

Jaguar XF is ‘Car of the Decade’

The Southern Guild of Motoring Writers has declared the Jaguar XF the car of the decade at the SGMW’s 10th anniversary event. Designed by Ian Callum, under Ford’s ownership, the XF demonstrated that Jaguar had finally realised that building cars that were a pastiche of past glories was no longer enough to guarantee sales. Under the skin, much of the Jaguar XF carried over from its predecessor – the Jaguar S Type – but it was in the execution that the XF demonstrated it was capable of giving Jaguar new life.