Monroe 905987 Rear Strut-mate Mounting Kit on 2040-parts.com

Dacia 'to stay true to its budget roots'

The global marketing boss in charge of Dacia’s roll-out has promised that Renault’s budget brand won’t move upmarket. Many bargain car marques end up inching – or scrambling – upmarket, with slicker products, big price hikes and a desertion of their value promise. But Dacia promises it won't follow the likes of Skoda, Hyundai and Kia by starting cheap 'n' cheerful and then raising prices.

Ford Focus is the best selling car…in the World

In the week Ford built its 350 millionth car, the Ford Focus has been  revealed as the best selling car in the world in 2012. It probably helps that the Ford Focus is now a proper world car, rather than just a European model, but it’s still an impressive claim - the Ford Focus sold 522,181 in the first seven months of 2012, making it the world’s top selling car. Of that half a million plus Focuss (Focii?) Ford shifted over a  quarter of them in Europe (153,400) and the Focus outsold both the Toyota Corolla and VW Golf worldwide and in the last year a massive 860,00 Focus have found homes round the world.

Volkswagen GTI Roadster for Gran Turismo uncovered – gets 496 bhp

The Volkswagen GTI Roadster (pictured) is uncovered We revealed last week that VW were making their GTI Roadster from the Gran Turismo game in to a real car for the Worthersee show, and they have. Blurring the lines between the real and the virtual (which is the way all our lives are going) Volkswagen has taken the opportunity to build a real life GTI Roadster – without the constraints of a concept heading for production – and has come up with a tw-seater open roadster that has some design cues from the Golf but is shorter and a lot lower. Those deign cues extend to a a front end that looks like a squashed GTI with its headlights and grill on show with big air intakes, all of which conspires to make the GTI Roadster look even lower, emaner and wider than it is.