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New Mercedes GLA does off-road – a bit (video)

Mercedes want you to know the new GLA (pictured) can do off-road too. Mercedes are wasting little time in promoting the new GLA, with yesterday’s reveal of the A-Class Compact SUV coming with the first video trailer to whet potential buyers’ appetites. But it seems Mercedes are quite keen to show that the GLA might  just offer a bit more than soft-roader credentials if you opt for a 4MATIC 4WD version (initially available on the 2.0 litre petrol GLA 250 or turbodiesel GLA 220 CDI) in their latest promo video for the GLA.

Ram introduces CNG-powered pickup

Aside from the Honda Civic Natural Gas, compressed-natural-gas-powered vehicles have usually been converted after the fact, generally for fleet use. Chrysler is hoping to carve out a niche in the corporate-pickup segment by selling a factory-built CNG Ram 2500 that can seamlessly switch over to gasoline operation when the natural-gas tanks run dry. The twin 4.6-cubic-foot CNG tanks (which store the equivalent of 18.2 gallons of gas) take up a section of the bed, while an eight-gallon gasoline tank provides fuel during start-up and then reserve capacity when the compressed tanks are tapped out, allowing the bruiser a measure of operational flexibility.

Mazda Kiyora concept

Mazda has released these images of the Kiyora compact urban concept car the automaker will reveal at the 2008 Paris Motor Show. Based on an all-new platform designed to maximize weight reduction, the Kiyora is claimed to represent the harmony between driving pleasure and environmental and safety features. Meaning 'clean and pure' in Japanese, the concept of 'Kiyora' helped the designers to imagine a city car cutting cleanly through an urban landscape, with water as the design theme.