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European Car of The Year 2012 to be announced at Geneva

The European Car of the Year 2012 will be revealed at next month's Geneva motor show, drawn from a shortlist of seven cars. In the first stage of voting judges selected their seven favorite cars from a list of 35 candidates that were put on sale in Europe in 2011, with January seeing the declaration of the seven finalists. The second stage of voting will find the European Car of the Year 2012, with the winning car announced on 5 March at the Geneva motor show.

Fisker, Energy Department face tough Congressional hearing on federal loans

Struggling Fisker Automotive took a bludgeoning Wednesday on Capitol Hill from top congressional Republicans who compared Fisker to failed automotive startups of the past and lambasted the Department of Energy for allowing the electric-car producer to draw down nearly $200 million in taxpayer-funded loans. House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., told Fisker founder Henrik Fisker that he will be remembered fondly for his design work for BMW and Aston Martin. But he compared Fisker to Malcolm Bricklin, John DeLorean and Preston Tucker -- three entrepreneurs known for their failed startup car companies.

VW Design Vision GTI gets 500bhp: Worthersee

The Design Vision GTI is built to show what a Golf built for racing would look like – and perhaps point to future evolutions of VW’s most successful car – and is built on the same MQB platform as the regular GTI. It’s a bit shorter (15mm) than a regular Golf, a chunk wider (71mm) and a lot lower (57mm) which conspires to make the Design Vision GTI much more aggressive looking than its mainstream sibling. Power comes from a 3.0 litre V6 with two turbos – good for 500bhp and 413lb/ft of torque – which is driven to all four wheels through a DSG ‘box and can scoot to 62mph in a supercar-like 3.9 seconds on its way to 186mph.