Standard Motor Products Cpa321 Choke Pulloff (carbureted) on 2040-parts.com

First factory-built wheelchair-accessible vehicle hits the market

Before Wednesday, the only wheelchair-accessible vehicles available to the public were aftermarket conversions that generally came with structural modifications and a price tag ranging from $50,000 to $80,000. Now, a startup company called the Vehicle Production Group (VPG) has released the first vehicle specifically assembled to accommodate people in wheelchairs, with an MSRP of $39,950. The vehicle is called the MV-1, which stands for Mobility Vehicle 1, and it was built for the disabled community.

CPP to buy Browns Lane

CPP are off to Browns Lane - where every E-Type Jaguar was built As regular readers will know, we’re big fans of CPP and are always happy to big them up at the drop of a hat, even before they acquired Vladimir Antonov’s money and set forth on a mission to buy up the world’s niche car makers. So with solid funding from ‘Vlad the Investor’, CPP are on a fast road to being a sizeable force in world car manufacture; not in the volume sense, but certainly in the impact their products are making. Despite pointing out to us that they haven’t actually bought Zagato (technically correct) Zagato is now very much part of the CPP portfolio, as is extreme off-roader Bowler – a more recent acquisition – both solid names to exploit in a high-end car maker future Nirvana.

Who's Where: Pierre Leclercq is Great Wall's VP and design director

Pierre Leclercq has been appointed vice president and head of design at Great Wall Motors. Splitting his time between the company's studio in Baoding, China, and a Shanghai-based satellite studio, he reports directly to chairman Wei Jianjun. In his role he‘s responsible for the design of the brand globally and leads a team of 130 designers in Baoding as well as 25 in the Shanghai studio.