Infiniti EV put on hold to concentrate on volume sales

An Infiniti EV based on the Nissan LEAF (previewed by the LE Concept above) have been put on hold Nissan’s luxury arm, Infiniti, is on a global push to try and make inroads in to the dominance of Lexus in the luxury Japanese car arena, and has ambitious plans to be selling 500,000 cars a year by 2017. But Infiniti sold only a third of that total in 2012, so any chance of hitting the lofty target of 500k cars in the next five years means they must concentrate on volume cars, not niche cars like a Nissan LEAF based EV. That means the LEAF-based Infiniti LE EV Concept we saw at the New York Auto Show in 2012 will stay as a concept for the foreseeable future as Infiniti boss, Johan de Nysschen, seeks volume cars that will push the brand forward and bring proper sales numbers.

MINI John Cooper Works Range gets a new engine

MINI JCW range gets new engines MINI has had a play and a tweak with the 1.6 litre turbo engine in the MINI John Cooper Works Range to make it more appealing. The Geneva Motor Show this year saw the debut of the latest MINI JCW – the MINI Countryman John Cooper Works – and with it output figures we though might be arriving across the MINI JCW range. Those figures saw the output of the 1.6 litre lump in the JCW rise to 215bhp and, surprisingly, managed to come in with economy figures for the JCW Countryman that were much the same as the rest of the JCW range.

CPP buys Zagato

Ferrari 550 GTZ - built by CPP In a move that seems to have received no coverage whatsoever, our favourite specialist car putter-together – CPP (Coventry Prototype Panels as was) – has quietly bought up Zagato. For those of you who are ‘Vlad Watchers’ this may come as no surprise. It seems that Vladimir Antonov is on a quest to buy up everything interesting there is to buy in the specialist car world (and Portsmouth FC too – no accounting for taste!), which includes funding CPP and its recent acquisitions.