Hyundai Motorsport Facility opens in Germany

Hyundai’s new Motorsport facility in Germany No one can accuse Hyundai of not taking their return to the FIA World Rally Championship in 2014 seriously. They’re busy preparing an i20 to take on the WRC, starting in Monte Carlo in January 2014, and have now started testing their swift WRC i20 in preparation. They’ve already recruited some impressive names to join their new Hyundai Motorsport GmbH team including Michel Nandan to head up their WRC efforts who has been joined by Frenchmen Bertrand Vallat and Stephane Girad, Alain Penasse, Ernst Kopp and Stefan Henrich.

Fisker Karma hybrids burn during superstorm Sandy

Fisker Automotive Inc. is looking into a report that 16 of its Karma plug-in hybrids caught fire at a New Jersey port after being submerged in seawater during Hurricane Sandy. "There were no injuries, and none of the cars were being charged at the time," the company said in a statement.

New BMW X5 gets a range of M Performance goodies

The new BMW X5 gets a range of M Performance goodies It wouldn’t be a BMW unless you could make it look like it can go faster, even when it can’t. So it’s good news for buyers of the new BMW X5 that they can opt for the cheapest, and least powerful, X5 sDrive25d and adorn it with enough goodies from the new X5 M Performance option list to make it look like it’d eat an X5 M50d for breakfast. But its not just the lowliest model in the new X5 range that can have any of the new M Performance parts bolted on; BMW will be happy for you to bolt on the extras to anything from the sDrive25d to the xDrive50i.