Toyota Mark X 2005 Air Cleaner [9929050] on 2040-parts.com

Insurance group lists its Top Safety Picks

After increasing its standards for 2011 models, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety says that 66 vehicles--more than double the 2010 total--rate as best in the industry at protecting passengers from front, side, rollover and rear crashes. Only 27 vehicles qualified last year after the group, funded by the insurance industry, required that vehicles pass a roof-strength test to earn a good rating, claiming that stronger roofs would reduce the risk of serious or fatal injury by 50 percent in a rollover accident. The most mentioned carmakers on the 2011 list are Hyundai/Kia and Volkswagen/Audi, both with nine vehicles to get the Top Safety Pick designation.

Audi TT Roadster

Following the launch of the new TT earlier this year comes its open sibling, the TT Roadster. Continuing to rebuke the trend for folding hard-tops despite even Mazda providing such an option on the MX-5, the TT Roadster perseveres with a cloth roof instead. Not only saving weight, this also means no visual mass protruding over the belt-line, though like its predecessor the roof adopts a more abrupt profile when raised than the fluidity of the coupe's profile.

2013 Dacia Sandero Revealed

The new 2013 Dacia Sandero 2 – a Fiesta sized budget offering – has been revealed ahead of a public debut at the 2012 Paris Motor Show. Yesterday we had news of Renault’s cut-price Dacia Logan – which may come to the UK – and today we get news of the Dacia Sandero 2 – beloved by James May – which will debut at Paris at the end of the month and is definitely heading for the UK. The Sandero has been a big-seller throughout Europe for years but now, with the launch of the Sandero 2, Dacia has decided the time is right to make their budget supermini available in the UK alongside the new Dacia Duster SUV.