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2012 Focus ST at Frankfurt. Or could it be the 2013 Focus RS Concept?

Production-ready 2012 Focus ST at Frankfurt. Or not? As the Frankfurt Motor Show looms closer, car makers are starting to reveal and tease their plans, and Ford sent us a press release this week promising a big presence at Frankfurt and a ‘Performance Focus’.

Petrol prices reach three-year low

PETROL PRICES are at a three-year low, with Yorkshire and Humberside remaining the cheapest area, according to figures from the AA. But the good news for drivers is offset by a real-terms dip in earnings which has pushed wages back to 2002 levels adjusting for inflation, the AA added. Petrol forecourt prices across the UK averaged 129.46p a litre in mid March compared to 129.63p in mid February.

New Hyundai Test Centre at the Nurburgring revealed

Hyundai’s new test centre at the Nurburgring If anyone had said, just a few years ago, that Hyundai would develop a test centre at the Nurburgring to help shake-down their cars, they’d have been laughed at. But Hyundai – and Kia – have come so far in recent years that it makes absolute sense for them to develop a full-time testing facility at the Nurburgring to test their cars for the road, along with just about every other car maker of note. James May may object to the Nurburgring factor in the suspension set-ups of many road cars (and we do have some sympathy for his point of view), but the sometimes extreme nature of the Nurburgring’s surfaces – and its endless twists and turns, uphill and down – do offer car makers an easily accessible place to test cars in the (almost) real world.