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News watch October 2011: 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-hourMonday 31 October 2011• The two companies planning to buy Saab - China's Youngman and Pang Da - have agreed to pay a €50 million bridging loan, court documents show. And they are pledging €610m in long-term funding from 2012, according to ANE (Automotive News Europe)  • Martin Winterkorn, the CEO of the Volkswagen group, says he is pleased with the performance of Seat and Skoda.

VW CrossBlue Coupe Concept heading for Shanghai

Volkswagen are heading to the Shanghai Motor Show with a new SUV concept as car makers strive to satisfy car buyer’s lust for rugged cars to prowl the urban landscape. But the VW CrossBlue Concept doesn’t seem to be a car that fits in to the fad for compact SUVs, rather it’s a full-size SUV that appears to be a coupe version of the VW CrossBlue Concept we saw earlier this year in Detroit. So far we only have a sketch of the CrossBlue Coupe, and you can be pretty sure it won’t be quite as ‘Coupe’ as the sketches indicate when it does turn up in Shanghai this weekend; think more Audi Q7 than Mercedes GLA.

Gordon Murray Design T27 crash tested

The original Smart car probably did more than its fair share to persuade us that small cars needn't necessarily be unsafe. But now Gordon Murray is on the same mission: to persuade us that his titchy T27 city car is as safe as houses too. Gordon Murray Design has just issued its first crash test results, showing a T27 electric car after a crash test at the UK's MIRA industry research lab.  The crash test in question was the European-standard 40% offset deformable barrier front high-speed impact.