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Mandelson to announce help for car makers

Lord Mandelson is the man charged with finding ways to fund UK Car purchases (yes, he of the dodgy mortgage debacle – at least he should know a few tricks!) as the credit crunch has dried up funding, leading to an unprecedented drop in new car sales in the UK. Mandelson is due to make a statement in the Lords just after 3pm today, outlining the help the government is going to offer to ailing car makers. Central to this package is expected to be a funding channel directly from the Bank of England to inject liquidity in to the car financing sector.

Nissan’s NV200 London Taxi revealed in production guise

Nissan’s NV200 London Taxi revealed in production guise The lack of investment in the traditional London Taxi has left the door wide open for competitors, and Mercedes has made a good pitch with its Vito Taxi. But perhaps the most promising option for London Cabbies is the new Nissan NV200 Taxi for London – previewed over a year ago – which has now been fettled enough to be rolled out in something very close to production guise. Designed by Nissan’s London Design Studio, the NV200 Taxi for London is very similar to those Nissan has produced for other iconic taxi hotspots round the world – like the yellow New York Nissan Taxi – but comes with a bit of a pastiche of the traditional black cab’s nose with a new grill and round headlights.

Jaguar XF CKD assembly starts in India

Jaguar Land Rover has started assembling the Jaguar XF at its plant in Pune, India, in a move to reduce XF retail prices in India. Lower taxes on cars assembled in India from CKD kits produced in the UK  (although not as low as they were), rather than importing complete cars from the UK, mean assembling the Jaguar XF in India will give the XF  - already Jaguar’s best-selling car in India – a more attractive headline price. That means the 3.0 litre Jaguar XF dropping in price from 5.8 million rupees (around £68k) to 5.1 million (around £60k) and the newly introduced 2.2 litre diesel XF will come to market at 4.5 million rupees (around £53k).