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VW and Suzuki move closer together with joint projects

By Georg Kacher Motor Industry 29 June 2010 10:29 As predicted by CAR Magazine, Volkswagen last year bought a 19.9% stake in Suzuki. But according to the Wolfsburg grapevine, the minority interest is set to increase by 10% annually over the next four to five years. Fact or fiction?

Driver prefer atlas to sat-nav

SATELLITE NAVIGATION may have become an integral part of many drivers’ daily routine, three quarters of the UK’s motorists (76%) say they still prefer to use a road atlas to plan journeys. Drivers in a survey by the AA said they found an atlas more useful to give an overview of a journey. While satellite navigation systems are useful, a further 65% of drivers said they still use an atlas to check the sat-nav is selecting the best route.

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.