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Driven: Volkswagen Passat CC GT

Elegant and refined. Forty years ago these two words would not have been used to describe the Beetles bought in droves by the counterculture in the US; a symbol of the hippy movement and the definitive people's car, designed at a time when Germany sought to put people in motion. With the Passat CC, however, Volkswagen is indeed making a sharp move away from the ‘volks wagen', and these two words rolled off the tongues of those who saw the car in all three countries we drove through on our winter holiday.

Honda Civic Tourer 1.6 i-DTEC wins MPG Marathon

The winners of the MPG Marathon in the Honda Civic Tourer 1.6 i-DTEC Last year Honda took the CR-V 1.6i-DTEC out MPG Marathon playing, and managed to return an impressive 78mpg in a car the official figures say should do 63mpg, disproving (to a point) that cars just can’t achieve official economy figures in the real world. This time it’s the turn of the new Honda Civic Tourer with the latest 1.6 i-DTEC ‘Earth Dreams’ engine to go out and eke every possible inch of tarmac from every single drop of petrol. In the hands of Honda R&D engineers Fergal McGrath, James Warren, Tony Shiggins and Julian Warren, the Civic Tourer drove a total of 330 miles and managed to do 97.2mpg – an impressive 31.8 per cent more than the official average.

Lexus CT 200h: The CT 200h Kylie advert

Kylie has work for the Lexus shilling. Last month we reported that Lexus had splashed a chunk of Toyota’s rainy-day money on bagging Kylie Minogue to promote the Lexus CT 200h. Which seems like a very good idea.