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News watch November 2010: today's auto industry news

Welcome to CAR Magazine's news aggregator as we round up the daily stories in the auto industry. Top tip: news summaries are added from the top hour-by-hour Tuesday 30 November 2010• Fiat and Opel have signed an agreement whereby Fiat will supply vehicles comprising of several variants to Opel, commencing December 1 (Fiat)• Electric cars will make up 20 per cent of UK car sales by 2016, according to National Grid CEO Steve Holiday (Automotive News Europe)• Toyota has said it will repair 650,000 Prius models worldwide because of a fault with the coolant pump (BBC News)• Porsche look likely to succeed in persuading preferred shareholders to support a €5 billion stock sale becuase the deal may offer the chance to buy into Volkswagen at a discount rate (Bloomburg)• China will become Rolls Royce's biggest market, surpassing America as early as 2011 (Automotive News Europe)  Monday 29 November 2010• Bentley has appointd a new CEO to succeed Franz-Josef Paefgen, who's retiring. Porsche R&D director Wolfgang Dürheimer, 52, is now chairman and chief exec of Bentley Motors and Bugatti (Bentley)• In return, Porsche has replaced Dürheimer with Wolfgang Hatz, an internal appointment.

BMW beats Mercedes-Benz to claim first U.S. luxury sales crown

BMW fended off a late-year surge by rival Mercedes-Benz to win its first title as best-selling luxury brand in the United States. BMW said Thursday that U.S. sales rose 15 percent to 26,834 in December, for an annual total of 247,907.

AMG Vision Gran Turismo concept shows off ahead of PS3 appearance

Mercedes-Benz has revealed a spectacular new virtual sportscar concept created by its in-house design team for inclusion in Sony's new PlayStation 3 game "Gran Turismo 6." Called the AMG Vision Gran Turismo, the brawny-looking gullwing coupe is to be revealed as a model at the opening of Mercedes-Benz's new research-and-development center in Sunnyvale, Calif., on the eve of next week's LA Auto Show. Yet despite the unveiling in 1:1 scale, the new two-seater is destined to remain a feature of the virtual world as the first in what Mercedes-Benz is billing as a series of Vision Gran Turismo vehicles to be unveiled in the near future. While the virtual properties of the AMG Vision Gran Turismo mean it will only ever see running as a high-resolution graphic within the new "Gran Turismo 6" game, this hasn't deterred Mercedes-Benz from providing it with detailed styling and mechanical data -- elements of which are said to provide solid hints to the upcoming GT AMG due to be unveiled in mid-2014 as a range-topping replacement for the SLS AMG.