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News watch April 2012: today's auto industry news

Welcome to CAR Magazine's news aggregator as we round up the daily stories in the auto industry. Top tip: news summaries are added from the top hour-by-hourMonday 30 April 2012• Kia posted global first quarter 2012 profits up 26%, with sales up 12% worldwide. 635000 new Kias found homes, 79000 in Europe (up 24.6% on 2011 in a total market which contracted 7.1%), with the USA now Kia's largest market ahead of Korea.

MINI: Meet the MINI Family Video

MINI sends us a 2011 family video Many moan that MINI has become a parody under BMW, but the truth is that it’s just become an enormous success with BMW doing what BL tried to do a generation ago – and failed. BL failed to grow and develop the Mini beyond the 1960s, although it had success in the ’60s with badge-engineered Minis (Riley Elf, Wolsely Hornet), Mini Coopers and Countrymans, and even a grown-up Mini – the Austin/Morris 1100. So BMW are really only carrying on what BL did in the ’60s, just in spades.

Coming soon: A bigger, better autoweek.com

First, we want to thank all the readers who have helped make autoweek.com what it is today -- we've worked hard to ensure no nugget of cool car news falls through the cracks, and we've been rewarded by a 100 percent increase in visitors over the past two years. That said, we also know there's a lot about our site design that can be improved. Articles don't "pop" the way they should, the home page is far too busy, and our commenting system is…well, let's just say that anything relying on Facebook deserves a healthy dose of skepticism.