Bus and lorry drivers will have their skill reassessed every five years from next spring under proposals by the Government.
The Driving Standards Agency is inviting the public to enter into consultation on the implementation of the Driver Certificate of Professional Competence, a new qualification that all professional bus, coach and lorry drivers will need to have if they want to drive for a living.

The explosion of digital multimedia infotainment systems in cars is prompting car manufacturers to adopt hard disk drives, or HDDs, for their ‘infotainment’ systems.

Orders of HDDs for automotive infotainment systems are expected to reach 16.6 million units by 2013, nearly five times the 3.5 million supplied in 2006.

British tourists could be left stranded and face heavy fines because of the poor state of rental cars, according to a survey of 57 car hire companies across the Mediterranean by the AA.

The survey suggests that there is a  one in three chance that tourists will have to deal with it a breakdown alone. Portugal came out well, but Greece did badly with its hire cars and emergency equipment.

Now under new ownership, Chrysler plans to reintroduce the famous Pentastar badge over dealerships following its sale by Daimler group.
But the deal had to be helped with a seven year loan by the German company to the US based new owners who were struggling to fund the deal in the money markets.

Volvo celebrates its 80^th birthday next month and the VW Transporter is 60 years old.

New price data from BCA shows that the average price premium that diesel enjoys over petrol in the fleet/lease sector eroded completely in this year.  

Despite being sold at a higher mileage, diesel values from fleet and lease sources were on average around 5% higher than petrol values throughout 2006 but the auctioneer’s latest Pulse Report shows that differential has been narrowing in recent months and now appears to be reversing completely.  Values in the part-exchange sector, however, are not following the same pattern.

The taxpayer-funded inquiry into the collapse of MG Rover has cost more than £9.5 million.

Inspectors appointed by the government in May 2005 to inquire into the demise of the carmaker had racked up costs totalling £9.64m by August and exceed the controversial £6.5m loan granted by the government to MG Rover to allow it to keep trading for a week after it went into administration in April 2005.

According to EurotaxGlass’s, the residual values of some vehicles could suffer a marked decline if Transport for London’s proposals on increasing the Congestion Charge are passed unchanged. 

Transport for London want to increase the daily charge to £25 for vehicles for all cars with emissions above 225g CO₂ per km and registered before March 2001 with an engine capacity exceeding 3.0 litres. The trade price guide says the value collapse could be felt outside the South East.