Volvo plans to polish its image with styling, high-tech engines

Volvo's brand image is stuck somewhere between "premium" and "luxury," but the Swedish automaker aims to move further upscale with a fresh design language and a new generation of vehicles powered by more fuel-efficient engines. New mid-sized and large models will begin arriving in 2014 based on Volvo's lightweight SPA platform. The vehicles will use Volvo's coming generation of smaller four-cylinder engines.

Focus RS – get 345 Mountune horses from your Ford dealer

The Focus RS Mountune Power Kit gives you the power of an RS500 If you’re busy spitting feathers because you’re one of the unlucky thousands who tried to throw £35k at Ford for one of the limited edition Focus RS500s last week, worry not. You can save yourself a not inconsiderable chunk of change by taking your current Focus RS off to your local RS dealer and getting a Mountune Performance Upgrade Package and match the RS500 performance for rather less than the extra £10k the RS500 costs. Ford have a long history of working with Mountune to get more out of their production cars – Mountune even supplied the engines for the original Sierra RS500 BTCC entries –  and there are already Mountune kits available to get more from your Ford – without screwing with the warranty – for the Focus ST, the old Fiesta ST and even the latest Fiesta.

54,000 learner drivers have points

54,000 LEARNER DRIVERS have received penalty points on their licences before even passing the driving test. This equates to 22% of all learner drivers on the road and the majority (60%) are for speeding offences. Other common causes for learner drivers to accumulate penalty points on their provisional licence include jumping a red light (43%), driving without insurance (33% and driving carelessly (15%).