A wrap-up of some the week's other motoring news.
GM JOB LOSSES: General Motors, the US car-maker that owns Opel and Saab in Europe, sought to banish talk of bankruptcy this week by laying out plans to save $7 billion (€5.9 billion) a year by slashing a total of 30,000 jobs in North America and closing five of its factories.
The plan gives Rick Wagoner (below), chairman and chief executive, breathing space after a frantic fortnight during which negotations with unions were overshadowed by investor fears that the company could file for bankruptcy.
SPACE INVADERS: Motorists risk fines because cars are "outgrowing" parking spaces, according to British car magazine Auto Express. The increase in vehicle size has not been matched by an increase in the size of parking bays it claims. While the size of some cars has increased by as much as a quarter in the past 25 years, the size of on-street bays has stayed the same since the early 1980s, according to the magazine.
CHEAPER HYBRID: Toyota will begin using a cheaper and smaller hybrid system from 2008, more than doubling production of the petrol-electric vehicles to 600,000 units a year, the Japanese Asahi newspaper reported last week.
By making the system smaller, Toyota aims to slash the extra costs over regular engines by half and expand its use to most of its mid-sized or larger cars, the newspaper said.
VOLVO GROWTH: Volvo is expecting much bigger business from its second generation C70, going on Irish sale early in 2006. "When we introduced this coupé/convertible in 1998, sales started slowly and in the first year we did just 15 with the best year being 25 in 2000," explained David Bladdeley, managing director of Volvo Car Ireland. In seven years we sold less than 100 and that's the figure we expect to sell in 2006, with 200 a year thereafter."
The C70 designed by Pininfarina, will start at around €52,000. There will be three 2.4 engine options - two petrol and one diesel.