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Mark Vaughn: We’ll always have Vegas

There were a few bare spots on the floor of the Consumer Electronics Show this year, spots that in previous years had been jammed sardine-like with myriad Taiwanese makers of Hello Kitty knockoff cell phone cozies and electronic barking dogs, but the show this year was nonetheless pretty well attended. Besides, for those working their way upstream through the aisles like so many digitally trained trout, the empty spots left by exhibitors that pulled out were like refreshing mountain meadows or little piazzas in crowded Italian cities. Show management stocked the open spots with cushy couches, too, on which many a jet-lagged showgoer snoozed.

Kia KV7 Gullwing Concept at Detroit

The Kia KV7 Concept - will show at the 2011 Detroit Motor Show We’ve got used in recent years to the Koreans - in the guise of Hyundai and Kia – presenting more and more credible concepts which go on to become equally credible production versions. So the news that Kia are taking a new concept to the Detroit Motor Show in January – the Kia KV7 Concept - is something we should probably take quite seriously as a pointer to a new model. The fact that Kia allude to the production versions of cars like the Kia Soul and Kia Sportage being close in style to the concepts that preceded them in their press release on the KV7 also makes it an extremely strong possibility that the KV7 Concept is pointing to a new model from Kia.

MINI JCW Roadster rides the ‘Ring

MINI JCW Roadster pounding the Nurburgring Now we’ve got the MINI Coupe out in the open, with and without its swirly black and white camouflage, it must be close to MINI doing the same with the Roadster. Which is probably why we have spy photos of the MINI JCW Roadster pounding round the Nurburgring – last shakedowns, we assume. Because we can’t imagine MINI dragging out the reveal of the production model Roadster much past Frankfurt – if it takes that long – which will be a full two years on from when MINI first revealed the 2-seater MINI Roadster – the soft top twin of the MINI Coupe.