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The no-show cars: a reader rant on mad concepts

Instigated by Harley Earl at General Motors in the late 30s with the quaintly named Buick Y-Job, show cars, or concept cars, were presented to an excited public eager for new things. As the world recovered from a depression and then a war, these vehicles pointed to a better future that many people believed in, including the people who produced them. And, although many of the concept cars of the 50s, with their Jetsons plexiglass roofs and notional nuclear powered engines seem ludicrous now, in their time they weren’t that cynical.

Peugeot 308 CC (2008): first photos

By Tim Pollard First Official Pictures 11 July 2008 09:26 Peugeot – the pioneer of folding hard tops – today unveils the new 308 CC. It's not a radical coupe cabriolet, but it's a gentle evolution of the 307 CC blueprint: a four-seater family hatch turned convertible.The French company invented the first production opening metal roof back in the 1930s, after a few coachbuilders toyed with low-volume concepts, and then brought them to the mainstream with the 206 CC in 2001. The new 308 CC follows the same formula with a metal roof that somersaults into its loadbed in 20 seconds to leave a completely flat (if long) rear deck.Gobbling boot space as it goes?Naturally, the  boot shrinks when the roof is lowered, dipping from 465 litres to 266 when it's stowed.

New (2014) BMW X5: Full UK price list from X5 sDrive25d to X5 xDrive50i

The new BMW X5 costs from £42,590 for the sDrive25d We had the reveal of the new BMW X5 this week (which is either a new X5 or a facelift for the current X5, depending on how you look at it, and also the 2013 or 2014 X5) and now we have full UK prices for the new range. The starting point will be the X5 sDrive25d – BMW’s first rear wheel drive X5 and the first with a 4-cylinder engine – which will cost from £42,590 and comes with BMW’s 2.0 litre diesel which will give economy of 50.4mpg and emissions of 155g/km. BMW expect the same figures to apply to the next up the range – the X5 xDrive25d – which gets the same four-pot diesel as the sDrive version but has 4WD.