1959 Morgan 4/4 on 2040-cars

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Seat officially unveils new Toledo

One week after leaked images appeared online and just a few days after its sister car, the Škoda Rapid, was revealed, the Seat Toledo has taken a bow. Expected to "write a whole new success story" for the Seat, the five-door and its "timeless personality" has a mission to be "a great car for a great price." All of which sounds like the Spanish marque really has very little to say about their new model, eh?
In contrast to the Škoda's seven powerplant options, three will be on the Seat menu at launch: two petrol-flavored offerings in the form of a 1.2-liter, 73-horsepower TSI and a 1.4-liter, 119-hp TSI, and an oil-burning 1.6-liter, 102-hp TDI. Next year, a less potent 1.6-liter, 88-hp diesel will be added to the range.
We'll have live shots of it from the Paris Auto Salon floor later this fall, after which it will appear in Spanish and Portuguese showrooms before exports expand to other parts of the world. Prices will be announced closer to launch, so scroll down for a presser with the other details on Seat's new baby.

VW outsells GM in China for first time in 8 years

In case you didn't know, Volkswagen is hell-bent on becoming the largest automaker in the world. The German carmaker has inched closer to that goal, having outsold General Motors in China last quarter for the first time in eight years.
Volkswagen's sales in China, its largest marker, increased by 21 percent last quarter to 704,991 units. Those numbers almost tripled GM's third-quarter growth, and were enough to beat out the American automaker's 664,765 sales. GM, however, still leads in year-to-date sales in China by a slim margin of around 77,000 units. The Asian nation also happens to be GM's largest market, and according to the report in Automotive News, China's car market may grow to be larger than the US, Japan and Germany combined in three years' time.
About the news his company was bested in China by VW last quarter, GM CEO Dan Akerson is quoted saying, "It's not whether you're the biggest car manufacturer. It's whether you want to be the most profitable." It should be noted of these figures that GM includes truck figures, yet excludes Hong Kong and Macau from its Chinese sales numbers, while VW does just the opposite. Through September of this year, Volkswagen had 5 of the 10 best selling vehicles in China. GM boasted three of the cars on that list.

New Skoda Octavia, cast in the same mold, arrives full of new features

There's no reason a one-trick pony can't be an entertaining success - you've just really got to like that one trick. And while we're not saying that the new offerings from Škoda are one-dimensional, we are saying that it's a good thing we like the Czech brand's new design language; line up the new Octavia next to the Rapid and you'll need to know the details or the sizing chart to tell them apart.
The Octavia is the compact segment offering, but this larger third-generation comes packed with lots of new features. It is 90 millimeters longer and 45 mm wider than the previous car, with a wheelbase 108 mm longer, so it offers what Škoda says is more interior length, knee room and rear headroom than any other car in the segment. The hatchback opening at the rear hides a trunk that can hold 590 liters. For all that, it is up to 225 pounds lighter than the second-generation Octavia.
Four gasoline and four diesel engines will litter the options sheet, the most powerful of them the 1.8 TSI with 177 horsepower, the most frugal among them the 1.6 TDI GreenLine with 109 hp that gets 69 miles per gallon. All but the entry-level engines can be fitted with stop/start and brake regeneration, and a natural gas powerplant will be coming later. A hotted-up Octavia RS is also down the line.