SsangYong Korando gets a makeover for 2014

The 2014 SsangYong Korando (pictured) gets a facelift SsangYong have been on a bit of a mission to place the Korando as a perfect budget offering in the burgeoning Compact SUV market since it arrived in 2011. We’ve had the Korando SX arrive last year to tempt more buyers in, and a £1 million advertising campaign (focused on ‘economically challenged’ areas of the UK) to raise awareness, and now we get a facelift for 2014 to make the Korando more appealing. The facelift means a new grill, new headlights with LED driving lights, bigger air intake at the front, new lights at the back, new colours – Sunrise red, Cosmic blue and Carbonic grey - and some new wheels designs.

BMW Vision ConnectedDrive (2011) first pictures

This gorgeous two-seat roadster is the BMW Vision ConnectedDrive, set to be unveiled at the 2011 Geneva motor show. Unlike some of BMW’s other Vision-tagged concept cars, this unfortunately isn’t a thinly disguised production car, but a study designed to highlight the company’s driver assistance systems.  However, although BMW has released no details on the engine or layout under the sexy skin, thankfully the Vision ConnectedDrive’s stunning styling (including the shark nose, wrap-around rear lights and layered body) will find its way onto future production BMWs.  For a start sensors in the headlamps and rear lights monitor the traffic situation and the environment around the car, while instead of wing mirrors there are antennas that receive navigation data and transmit other information. Inside the driver has a 3D head-up display, and the system can project information about the chosen sat-nav route so it appears at the exact point of a possible turn-off. The 3D system also displays information in the foreground or background of the display depending on its relevance.

Driven: Volkswagen Passat CC GT

Elegant and refined. Forty years ago these two words would not have been used to describe the Beetles bought in droves by the counterculture in the US; a symbol of the hippy movement and the definitive people's car, designed at a time when Germany sought to put people in motion. With the Passat CC, however, Volkswagen is indeed making a sharp move away from the ‘volks wagen', and these two words rolled off the tongues of those who saw the car in all three countries we drove through on our winter holiday.