UK Insurer Parts the Most Unreliable and Costly Car to Fix

In an article on a BMW-faced Honda Accord we found for sale on Craigslist back in 2008, we wrote that in a perfect world, our ultimate car would be “designed by Italians, engineered by Germans, built by Japanese and marketed by Americans”.

So, what’s the worst car one could imagine? Well, if we played around with the above statements, we’d say one designed by Japanese, engineered by Americans, built by Italians and marketed by Germans.

But UK insurance firm Warranty Direct had something a little bit different in mind. Instead of playing the origin card, the company decided to check out its database of 50,000 live policies on cars aged five years on average to part the UK’s most unreliable vehicle that would break down every other month and cost an average of £2,050 (equal to US$3,270 - €2,330) to fix each year.

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Silverstone Organisers Ask: What is the Best British Sports Car of All Time?

The fifteen finalists in the Silverstone Classic’s, “Best British Sports Car of All Time” vote-in have been announced, and boy is there some choice picks. Before we get to that though, can I just point out a misnomer in using the, “of All Time” qualifier?

This assumes (prophetically?) that Britain will not be making any more sports cars in the future, whereas, “Best British Sports Car So Far” would be a far more accurate description. But enough with semantics: who are our lucky finalists? Read on….

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MG Preparing an Array of New Models to Conquer Europe

SAIC Motor Corporation, the owner of MG Motors, plans to develop several new models for the British brand in order to boost sales outside its home market in China. The Chinese owner of MG Motors has already spent £1 billion ($1.64 billion) to re-launch the MG and Roewe brands (former Rover) and intends to invest another £2.2 billion ($3.6 billion) to achieve annual sales of 700,000 by 2015.

In 2010, the two brands sold 160,397 cars, most of which were delivered in China, with only 2,000 units exported to other markets. This past April, MG launched its new mid-size MG6 in the UK, the first new car to be assembled at the British firm’s Longbridge plant in 16 years. The company said that when it completes the development of a diesel version, it will offer the car to rest of Europe. "We will not go into mainland Europe without a diesel," UK managing director, William Wong, told Autonews.

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