Magnaflow 446688 Direct Fit California Catalytic Converter on 2040-parts.com

Big Three Truck Premieres

Once just a local agricultural fair, the State Fair of Texas, Dallas, has now become the launch platform of choice for automobile manufacturers to present new trucks. Texas is an immense market for pickup trucks and this year, the Detroit Three were there, along with Toyota, to present world premieres. And for the auto executives that make the trip down, the Texas Fair is surely the easiest assignment they will get each year: people in Texas like full size trucks and buy them as personal vehicles not because they need their capacity but rather because "it's Texas here, y'know".

VW Taigun: It’s an Up! SUV

Volkswagen has revealed the VW Taigun at the Sao Paulo Motor Show in Brazil, a very compact SUV based on the VW Up! The Taigun is 3859mm long and 1728mm wide, making it a chunk smaller than the next VW SUV up (the Tiguan) and smaller even than Nissan’s Juke, but it gets an extra 50mm in the wheelbase compared to the Up so interior room looks decent. Vw say the Taigun is purposely designed to look just like a mini-me Tiguan or Touareg (and sound like one too) with its very similar styling, high ride height, skid plates and roof rails with an interior that offers room for four and enough spce for 280 litre of stuff in the boot (a plentiful 987 litres with the back seats folded).

One Lap of the Web: Toyota in the Motor City, GPS-enabled headlamps and a mobile Fiat shop

We spend a lot of time on the Internet -- pretty much whenever we're not driving, writing about or working on cars. Since there's more out there than we'd ever be able to cover, here's our daily digest of car stuff on the Web you may not otherwise have heard about. -- From Bring a Trailer, it's a 1966 Fiat Furgone panel van equipped as a mobile workshop.