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Chris Evans’ CarFest North. Just as big as CarFest South

Chris Evans’ second petrolhead extravaganza – CarFest North at Cholmondeley Castle – has been as big a success as CarFest South. It may be a new petrolhead show on the calendar, but Chris Evans’ CarFest Shows have been a real success, not just for visitors but for the BBC’s Children in Need charity. This last weekend saw CarFest North try and follow in the footsteps of last month’s CarFest South, which it appears to have done in style, pushing the amount raised for Children in Need up to £800k from both CarFest events.

Early cars, fashion on display at the Petersen

Automotivated, a new exhibit at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles, traces the evolution of clothes worn in cars--from the bulky circus-tent stuff people had to wear to keep from freezing to death in the jangly, open-topped conveyances of 100 years ago, up to the height of the European Concours in the 1920s and '30s, when what you and your date wore was just as important to winning best of show as the styling of your Delahaye/Delage/Talbot Lago. “In the earliest days of the automobile, you were sitting on the car, you weren't sitting in it,” said Leslie Kendall, curator at the Petersen. So the first section of the exhibit shows people (mannequins dressed as people) in heavy, practical overcoats, scarves and goggles.

U.S. government to buy 101 Chevrolet Volts, 10 Nissan Leafs and 5 Think City EVs

The Obama administration is buying the first 116 plug-in electric vehicles for the federal fleet -- 101 Chevrolet Volts, 10 Nissan Leafs and five Think City EVs, the U.S. General Services Administration said today. The purchases are part of a pilot project aimed at advancing President Obama's goal of having 1 million EVs on the road by 2015.