Well we have all heard the stories of people being sent the wrong way down one way streets and there are those who have ended up in the middle of nowhere, but just imagine for a minute what would relying on your sat nav would be like if somehow a hacker has managed to get into the system that you are using and change it! Could not happen, well you maybe be surprised.

For some people using sat nav has become a way of life, some people use it virtually all the time no matter where they are going, it may even be just a trip down the road to the shops. This may at first appear to be over the top, but the sat nav is updated to warn users of traffic and road works etc, so by using it would appear to be a sensible move, after all nobody wants to be caught up in long traffic jams etc.

Yet it appears that two security experts, Andrea Barisani, chief security engineer for Inverse Path Ltd. and Daniele Bianco, a hardware hacker at Inverse Pathhave, proved that it is most defiantly possible to get into the sat nav system and change the information being shown, now it seems that they have used some very standard equipment that anyone can buy from their local computer store to enter the system and change the data that is on the sat nav system sitting on your dash board.

This frightening revelation will be announced at the CanSecWest a security conference taking place this week in Vancouver this Friday. They will present evidence of a test hack that they managed to breach a system and where able to send messages through the system which would eventually end up being shown on the sat nav in users vehicles, now do you believe what you sat nav is telling you?

Source [Top Speed]

This has been coming for a while now, but figures for the first quarter of the year confirm Toyota as the number one car company in the world today.

Previously the spot had been held by US car giant General Motors, but as we have seen in the past few years the main car manufacturers GM, Ford and Daimler Chrysler have been hit by many factors which are outside of the industry as such and could be said to beyond their direct control.

Toyota have been steadily building towards the top spot and with their decision to go with the green car (Prius) which has proved to be a absolute winner, yet there are those who say that it is not totally the car sales that have helped the company reach this accolade. Many industry insiders believe that because of the Japanese culture, the company has been able to exploit certain areas.

We have seen that benefits to staff in the US have been major headache for the big three, these being mainly health care and pension liabilities, which as whole amounts to a lot of money and thus has an effect on investment in new plants, design and so on, is this true or just an excuse, well it is true that we have heard how expensive employing people in the west is, and in Japan it is different, but we are talking about a global market, the big three do have plants in other countries as do virtually all vehicle makers, the costs and working conditions are favourable and therefore most of the manufacturers are playing on a level playing field.

The fact that Toyota have the number one spot does not necessarily mean that they will be holding on to it, in fact the number one spot will probably be seeing many different names over the years to come as the car companies develop a worldwide foothold, and in particular the Chinese market, where we have seen that the luxury end have been showing their cars, yet this market has an even bigger market for small to mid sized cars, this where the sales are going to change the status of all car manufacturers.

Source [Business Week]

Fiat will be sending to the states the newly designed Fiat 500. The car which is due to be launched some time in July this year is really considered as an iconic Italian small car but in its original form never really managed to crack other markets, but now is the era of the small car and therefore the time is now right for worldwide marketing.

The company are not looking to send the little cars over to the states right away, as they probably need to fill orders for the European market first, so it is believed that the estimated time of arrival for the Fiat 500 will be early 2010 sounds a long way off, but in that time the desire too own the latest little car will grow.

The cars will be built in Poland, where Fiat has had a base for some time. Details of the cars are still in the early stages, but it is believed that one of the models will include a special Arbath version, which will be producing a massive 150 bhp, for such a small car that is something very special indeed.

For Fiat there are exciting times ahead with the launch of the 500, we can expect some exciting media coverage when the car finally hit’s the road.

Source [Top Speed]

Amongst all the hype and very large Yen price tags in Shanghai, the management of Rolls Royce Motors have hinted at the possibility of the company producing a small car, probably even before the end of the decade.

However, to a manufacturer like Rolls Royce small may have a slightly different meaning than the rest of us have, I would suspect that their idea of small is probably creating a car to enter the market that is populated by the likes of the Jaguar, Mercedes and BMW top of the range models.

This is a sensible move by a company who pride themselves on luxury and craftsmanship, because this is the same move that Mercedes made when they launched the 190 series of cars, everyone believed that it would never sell, yet now by entering that market actually changed Mercedes for the better.

The company at the moment only builds around 800 cars per year, but with an average price of around £250,000 ($500,000) it is not hard to see how the figures stack up, so if they were to produce a car that was around the price of £70,000 ($140,000) would there be a market for this car? I think so, though of course this is all conjecture at the moment, but never the less is very exciting to think of all those mini Rolls Royce’s driving around town.

According to sources, the design stages have already finished, so the concept is there and once the space has been made in the factory then we could be seeing the first Rolls Royce concept car for the market very soon, maybe even within a year or so.

Source [Reuters]

The new mini 2 from luxury German car giant BMW has been awarded the highest score possible in the Euro NCAP crash test, the five star award was given for the excellent safety measures that the BMW design team have built into the car.

The tests consist of head on and side on impact crashes, yet considering the size of the car the results have been very favourable, meaning that in an pact the occupants of the mini have little or no risk of injury, this is a fantastic result for the car makers.

The main tests were, front impact deformation of which the car received 13 out of 16 points, side impact deformation,considered as the most serious for injury, the car was given 16 out of the 18 points available and the one that we always seem to see on the news, the offset frontal crash test, where the car is driven into a solid object, but the impact is only at one of the front corners, this test found that the passenger compartment was maintained.

For families who want to drive a small car the safety aspect is very impressive too, after the test the child safety result was above average, all in all the overall result was a resounding success for BMW and the new Mini 2.

First deliveries of the Mini 2 started in the UK in October 2006. The mini had launch engines which included the 1.6-litre petrol Cooper and the turbocharged 1.6-litre Cooper S. However there are plans to introduce a 1.4-litre Mini One will sometime in 2007. All minis except for the convertible come with six air bags.

Prices will start around £11,595 for the One, £12,995 for the Cooper and £15,995 for the range-topping Cooper S.

Source [Auto Web]

The era of the crossover is nowhere near over, and to see the new Audi Cross Coupe Quattro you would have to believe that they are here for good. A blend of sports, four wheel drive and a versatile family vehicle, this car is a true Audi the engineering stands out as you would expect from this company, and it appears that they have paid attention to every single detail, which is why this car just oozes class.

Being an Audi naturally this car is a high gloss silver, the colour that is to Audi as red is to Ferrari. But unlike the Ferrari the Quattro is the sort of car that car and should be used every day, it is built for all road conditions and with those massive 20” wheels it would neither snow or thick mud would give this car any resistance, this is the beauty of the crossover, not the best of both worlds, it is the best of all worlds, being at home on a school run or following a cross country run, the Audi would make easy work of either.

The power comes from a four cylinder in-line 2.0 TDI engine, this is fitted in the transverse manner, which gives more leg room for less body, and although the power plant can deliver over 200 bhp, it is believed that a mere six litres of diesel fuel will power this car for over 100 km’s, which will please those who want a fuel efficient high end car.

Basically what Audi have done is built a beautiful car that has everything that anyone is ever going to need, sport mode, family comfort and off road usability, or it could just be called a jack of all trades. Will we ever see this car on the road? I doubt if we will see this exact car, though there will no doubt be a toned down version offered probably offered as the long awaited Q5!

Source [Kicking Tires]

It seems that the popularity of the Chinese auto market just gets bigger by the day, for the top car manufacturers china is the growth market and perhaps that is why they are all taking no chances at this years Shanghai Auto Show which opens on Sunday (22^nd April).

Among the home grown cars to be shown are that of the Nanjing Automobile Group who bought the Rover and MG motor companies and Shanghai Automotive Industries Corp, who plan to show off a new sedan style car which is powered by fuel cell technology and is said to be able to reach a top speed of almost 93 mph.

There will be news coming out before the show actually opens, because there are “Press Days” on Friday and Saturday, this will enable all the new and concept models to get an extra bit of pre show publicity, like the BMW Z9 a concept version of the companies sports car, although this is a concept car it is believed that the Z9 is not too far away from the car that will become the competitor for Mercedes and Audi market.

Why is this event so important to the major brands? Well it is simple, china is now the second largest vehicle market in the world, the number one being the US, with around 7.2 million vehicles being sold last year, which is a rise of around 25% on the previous year, quite an incredible turnaround considering that is was not that long ago when china was considered to be the bicycle capital of the world.

Source [The Age]

More Details PDF [Auto Shanghai]

Show Details [Auto Shanghai]

It was a few years going when VW presented the world with the concept car that would be able to get 285 miles to a single gallon of fuel, amazingly as it may seem! Back a few years when this car came out, everything appeared to be visionary, and as we all know the cars that appear as a concept very rarely appear as a regular car, this is normally down to the viability of the design and of course the cost.

Now it appears that the costs of building the car has come down to a reasonable figure which in turn means that building the car is now a real possibility, so will we all be driving around in cars that would only need a gallon of fuel of so for the whole week, possibly but by then the price of the fuel would probably be twenty times the cost that it is now days.

The concept car which has a one cylinder 299 cc diesel engine and weighs in at under 300 kilos, was tested when it was driven from the VW plant in Wolfsburg to a shareholders meeting in Hanover, it was during this journey that the fantastic figure of 285 mile to a gallon of fuel was actually achieved.

Of course should this car go into production it is very unlikely to look like the original car, for one thing there are many changes to the law regarding safety features etc, but there is a growing interest in cars and other vehicles that can run on little amounts fuel, alternative fuels or a combination of the two, so we can expect to be seeing a lot more concept cars being shown at car shows that can offer a high mpg and are made from recycled light weight materials.

Source [Channel Four News]

Ordinarily the sale of a car through auction site eBay would not really warrant the attention, yet here we are talking about an old VW Golf that has been on sale for a couple of weeks, the car is a 1999 VW Golf there is no indication as to what model or to what it uses as fuel, I could hazard a guess but that would just be in bad taste.

The car is a UK registered vehicle and is still in the country, originally the car is said to have been owned by a person named Joseph Ratzinger who at the time was a cardinal, he of course is better known these days as Pope Benedict XVI, and there is documentation to support this. The car was obtained by a Benjamin Halbe who upon receiving the document realised that the former keeper was his holiness, so naturally he put it onto the eBay and promptly sold it for $216,000 back in May 2005, there is no word on how much he paid for it, but I am suspecting that he made a fair profit out of the deal.

New owners the casino group Golden Palace put the car back up for sale on eBay a couple weeks ago and on Saturday the auctioned ended, over the period that the car was on sale for the pages had over 195,000 hits, yet the bidding it is believed, did not reach the reserve price with the highest bid being only a mere $200,000, well guys you have to allow for some depreciation!

As the car is located in the UK, the sellers had announced that 40% of the proceeds from the sale, would go to a charity called Habitat for Humanity of Great Britain, we will have to wait and see if there is a winning bid and what will be planned next for the VW Golf, that was once driven by the Pope, Oh! If only cars could talk!

Source [North County Times]

There is a real effort going on to design, build and bring to the marketplace a car that will cost less than $3,000, this is no joke or marketing scam to get potential buyers interested who later find out that their $3,000 only pays for the body and the rest are optional extras, this is the real deal.

The car giant Renault-Nissan is taking this very seriously as they opened a new plant in India they announced that there would be a future model that touched the $2,500 figure, this free fall to the bottom end of the car market has begun because of the Indian auto maker TATA have for some time been working on a sub $3,000 car and if all accounts are correct this car will be ready to go on sale as early as next year and will have a starting price tag of $2,500, unbelievably as it may seem.

The move by just two large auto manufacturers could actually change the whole car marketplace, this is very similar to the ideas of both Ford with the Model T and VW with the peoples cars the Beetle, should a car become available for a mere £2,500 there will be a massive increase in vehicle ownership, obviously these cars are not going to compete with the other cars in that market segment but there will be people willing to sacrifice something in order to buy a brand new car for such a low price, it will be very interesting to see how this develops and most of all how the car stands up to the critical eye of the public. I’ll have four please!

Source [Business Week]