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Ellesmere Port's bid to build Ampera hits snags

By Rob Golding Motor Industry 09 October 2009 15:02 Prime minister Gordon Brown’s personal crusade to get Vauxhall's version of the Chevrolet Volt petrol-electric plug-in hybrid – the Ampera – built in Britain's Ellesmere Port factory in 2012 is a dream delayed, CAR can disclose today.News that the UK Astra plant is the best in Europe, that the Astra's Delta platform will underpin the Ampera, and that Volt will be on US sale from 2010 had been taken to mean that Vauxhall would be churning out the cars in the north west within three years.But the prospect of an electric car industry growing up around the run-down Merseyside manufacturing site is not imminent, CAR has learned.'No Ampera to be built in Europe before 2015'Vauxhall insiders have made it clear that the car to be known as the Vauxhall/Opel Ampera in Europe will be an import from the US for at least five years. One senior planner told us: 'The US will be the sole source of Amperas until at least 2015.'Bob Lutz, GM's former product supremo who recently came out of retirement as a PR, said that the low value of the dollar made the US an ideal site for the manufacturing of export cars. And with forecast sticker prices of the range-extender electric car standing at a scary £35,000+, every price saving is vital to its marketability.The European market also needs time to get its electricity recharge infrastructure in place before it is worth making cars onshore in volume, GM high-ups point out.

Scottish Car of the Year 2011: Big night for Jaguar Land Rover

Scottish Car of the Year 2011 Last night saw the awards dinner for the Scottish car of the Year at the Thistle in Glasgow, with Land Rover taking top honours and Jaguar walking away with three gongs (well, two gongs and the motoring equivalent of a ‘Lifetime Achievement’ trophy). The unstoppable Range Rover Evoque took the big prize, being voted the Scottish Car of the Year. Of course, it also won SUV of the year (it would have been a bit odd if it didn’t) and at this rate – and the great feedback from customers and media – Land Rover look like they’ll be mopping up a lot of gongs this next year.

Halloween: Best rides for trick-or-treaters

So, how do you think all those ghosts, goblins, witches and super heroes get to your neighborhood on Halloween night, anyway? Television and the big screen have used all sorts of contraptions that could fit into just about any Halloween theme. From Herman Munster's Munster Koach to the Batmobile to the rarely seen Super Car from Darrin Stevens' garage in "Bewitched," there have been plenty of scary-looking vehicles used in TV and movies that were hardly (in most cases) darlings of car showrooms.