Porsche Seat Belts Front Speedster 356,911,912 on 2040-parts.com

Range Rover Evoque heads for the Dakar Rally

Range Rover Evoque Dakar Rally Land Rover are pretty chuffed with the way the new Range Rover Evoque has been received; feedback from the trade is hugely positive and buyers are queueing up to grab the Evoque – even with its premium prices. So the news that the British Excite Rally Raid Team will be running the Evoque in the Dakar rally will be a nice bit of off-road gloss to add to the street cred the Evoque already has in spades. The Dakar Rally is the world’s toughest car competition, run over gruelling terrain between Paris and Dakar.

Lotus 'Eagle' (2009): first pictures

By Ben Pulman First Official Pictures 15 July 2008 19:00 This is the long-awaited new Lotus 2+2, with a 3.5-litre Toyota V6 and four apparently useable seats. It's the first new Lotus for 13 years and a pretty significant launch, due for its show debut at the 2008 London motor show later this month on 22 July 2008. That's when we’ll find out the name of this new Lotus – codenamed Eagle – but in the meantime the company is teasing us with some new details.

Lotus not liquidating

When a storied car brand moves only 137 units in a year in the UK and 242 in the US, predictions of said marque's demise carry a certain amount of weight -- 137 is not exactly a number that makes an automaker too big to fail. When the manufacturer in question shows up on a government list of companies to be shut down, brand-enthusiast hearts get heavy; the early stages of mourning kick in. But when the company in question is Lotus, the enthusiast thinks to himself, “Eh, they've been in dire straits before.