Corvette Big Block Head 427 1965 on 2040-parts.com

Best Western Hotels rolling out EV charging points in the UK

We’re electric car sceptics – or at least sceptical about their ability to replace the ICE car as our principal form of personal transport – although EVs do have their place as runarounds in urban areas, where their limited range isn’t really a factor. But taking your EV off for a weekend jaunt does pose logistical problems when the average range is probably no more than 80 miles, and something worth making the effort for a weekend away is almost always going to be further away than that. But a bit of smart marketing by Best Western Hotels – a group of 270 or so independently run hotels round the UK – means EV drivers will soon be able to plot their weekend away on the basis of Best Western Hotels en route, with Best Western planning on fitting EV charging points in their car parks, with half their hotels having free charging points by September.

Mini Rocketman concept (2011) at 2011 Geneva motor show

The new Mini Rocketman is manna from heaven for critics who bemoan the new BMW Mini’s growth spurt from bijou city car to bloated supersized mini. The Rocketman, Mini’s 2011 Geneva motor show debutant, is a blueprint for a new kind of smaller Mini – and it’s within an inch or two of Alec Issignois’s 1959 original. Don’t dismiss the Mini Rocketman as pie-in-the-sky concept.

2013 Ford Mondeo – first photo, and it’s not the 2013 Fusion

First photo of the 2013 Ford Mondeo The North American Ford Fusion has been revealed at Detroit, but we have the first photo of its European cousin – the 2013 Ford Mondeo. We’ve covered the reveal of the 2013 Ford Fusion from the Detroit Auto Show and pointed out that, to all intents and purposes, the Fusion North America gets is pretty much the same car we’ll see as the 2013 Ford Mondeo. But just so there’s no confusion, we’ve got the first photos of the 2013 Mondeo in pre-production guise, just so you can see how similar the Mondeo will be to the Fusion.