Kia Niro Concept points to a Kia Nissan Juke rival

The Kia Niro Concept (pictured) debuts at Frankfurt as a pointer to a new compact SUV Earlier this month we had a teaser from Kia for a new compact urban SUV heading for a debut at the Frankfurt Motor Show, and here its is – the Kia Niro Concept. Kia has obviously been careful with its concept naming this time after the storm in a teacup response to the Kia Provo last year, with a name that shouts ‘Famous Actor’ rather than ‘Famous Terrorist’. Sensible move.

Ferrari 599 Hybrid – it’s a very ‘Green’ Ferrari

The very green Ferrari 599 Hybrid at Geneva To a die-hard petrol head, Ferrari lover or frankly anyone with a proper sense of right and wrong, the idea of a ‘Green’ Ferrari is anathema. Fortunately, although I suppose you could consider the Ferrari 599 Hybrid ‘Green’ in the sense that it will probably produce less CO2 (which is, of course, the single most important thing for  Ferrari), the performance of this 599 Hybrid  is going to be its forte, and the real green bit on this particular 599 Hybrid is the hideous paint job. We’ve known for a while that Ferrari were working on a Hybrid, and we recently revealed it would be a hybrid version of the Ferrari 599.

New car registrations continue to rise – up 6.6% in July 2014

The Ford Fiesta (pictured) topped the UK sales chart again in July 2014 There must come a point (mustn’t there?) when new car sales/registrations slow down in the UK, but there seems little sign of it happening any time soon. For the 29th month in a row, new car registrations in the UK rose again in July 2014, up by 6.6 per cent on the same month in 2013, hitting a total of 172,907. So far in 2014, new car registrations have risen by 10.1 per cent to 1,460,172, with the SMMT predicting that new car registrations for 2014 will end up 8.1 per cent up on 2013 at 2,450,000.