Rolls Royce Allison 250 C20 on 2040-parts.com

Smart For-Us concept unveiled at 2012 Detroit show

Smart made a splash with its world debut at the 2012 Detroit auto show: its For-Us concept car provides a vision of the Smart as an American icon, a pick-up. The diminutive truck - just 3547mm long - is longer than a Fortwo, and is supposed to be based on the running gear of the next-gen Smart Forfour, aka the new Renault Twingo. So if the For-Us doesn't look so much like a Smart any more, from the front at least, that's why.

GM returning to leasing with luxury vehicles

General Motors will return to the leasing business focusing on luxury vehicles, but not on a broader basis, Vice Chairman Bob Lutz said. "We will get back into leasing, but we are not going to use massive subsidized leasing to drive volume because it's volume without profitability," Lutz said July 29 in an interview with Automotive News. "We'd rather sell less at higher profit than sell more at lower profit." Lutz said it still would make sense for GM to do more leasing on its luxury vehicles.

Audi shows S3 Sportback (2013) – but is a used S3 a better buy?

Here’s Audi’s S3 Sportback, the five-door version of the 296bhp Quattro hot hatch unveiled last year. The S3 Sportback takes 5sec flat to accelerate from 0 to 62mph, that’s one-tenth of a second quicker than Audi’s official figure for its three-door stablemate. That’s because the initial 5.1sec S3 time was only an estimate, and Audi’s subsequent tests have shown the three-door S3 actually dipping below five seconds in the 0-62mph sprint.