JustBritish

The maverick but multi-award winning British car designer and engineer who left his eponymously named company in Leicestershire after a new owner took over is to build a new supercar prototype in South Africa.

Lee Noble, whose work in recent years is said to have defined the British low volume sports car market has set up a new company, Fenix Automotive, and today (19 November) announced the launch of “one of the most dramatic supercars of the century” next year.

With production cars like the Noble M12 and M400 to his credit, Noble says he is now delivering a lightweight, ultra-powerful mid-engined V8 supercar to market by the end of 2010.

The as yet unnamed car, which will cost from under £75,000, “will trounce all previous Lee Noble-built Nobles for performance with a 0-100mph time of under seven seconds”, and is aimed at serious track day drivers, while also being usable on public roads.
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Car maker Mini is preparing to launch a new special edition of the subcompact icon outfitted by its ultra-luxury cousin Rolls-Royce. Both British automakers are owned by Germany’s BMW.

The special edition cars will go into production in 2010 as 2011 model year cars. It has not been decided yet whether the cars will be available in the United States. If they are made available to U.S. customers, they’ll be in extremely limited numbers, said Mini spokeswoman Nathalie Bauters.

“It’s going to be for Mini fanatics and those who want something really special from Mini,” she said.

The cars’ bodies will be no different from those of other Mini Coopers, but they will be coated in a special paint, the color of which has also not been decided, Bauters said.

The cars will be built at the Mini factory in Oxford, said Bauters. It has not yet been decided if the cars will brought to Rolls-Royce’s factory for final outfitting with special high-end interior trim and other luxury touches or if the the Rolls-Royce produced luxury materials will be added to the cars on the Mini assembly line.

Mini announced in May that it was considering a high-end special edition car. Up to now, Mini had not officially confirmed production of a Rolls-Royce edition.

The first all-new MG for 14 years has gone on show in China and by the end of next year the new car will be built on a production line at Longbridge, it was revealed today.

Based on the Chinese-made Roewe 550 – which itself is based on a shortened version of the old Rover 75 – it will be called the MG6 when production starts in Birmingham.

The new model will be produced in saloon and hatchback form and will complement the two-seater MGTF being built at Longbridge.

Early production models have been revealed at the Guangzhou Auto Show which opened yesterday.

The launch in China, the world’s largest automotive market, begins the international roll out of sales of the MG6 which includes the UK. Sales in China will begin in January and plans for the UK and other markets will be released during 2010.
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Ever since the halcyon days of Jaguar’s formative years the British car maker has had a happy knack of delivering some eye catching icons. As those early days of the 1940s and 1950s bore witness to the company’s founding father Sir William Lyons’ aim to produce cars boasting ‘grace, space and pace’ so the legendary big cats have continued to attract attention.

The latest is the Jaguar XKR which has unreservedly set its sights on supercar status, proving in many people’s eyes, to be perhaps the best looking mainstream Jaguar model to date.

There is very much a luxurious character to the XK and XKR body style, whether in hard-top coupe guise or the cloth cocooned convertible which is driven here. This is truly a sophisticated grand tourer with the power to move the sports car experience on to a new level courtesy of class leading body strength coupled with the lightest aluminum architecture leading to an on road performance boosting fuel efficiency and delivering some precise chassis dynamics.
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British engineers are gearing up for an attempt on the world land speed record with a vehicle they believe will be capable of 1,000mph.

The design for the Bloodhound SSC – SuperSonic Car – is now complete. Built from aerospace-grade aluminium, it is based on a 14-foot hybrid rocket and a jet engine from the Eurofighter Typhoon. A third engine pumps fuel through to the rocket.

The designers claim it should achieve 135,000 horsepower – equivalent to the power of 180 Formula One cars -British car aims for 1,000mph record and is expected to accelerate to 1,050mph in just 40 seconds.

The original design featured a much smaller rocket, positioned above a rather heavier engine. But this created too much drag. Increasing the size of the rocket threatened the stability of the vehicle, and the decision was made to effectively turn the design upside down.

The record attempt will be made by Wing Commander Andy Green, who established a record speed of 763mph in 1997. It will take place at a dried-up lake bed in South Africa’s Northern Cape Province in 2011.

Check out the Bloodhound SSC site for more information.

British super-luxury car manufacturer, Rolls Royce, unveiled an all-new, four-door, premium saloon model called the Ghost. It will be available in the second quarter of 2010.

The company hopes to sell 50 to 60 Ghosts in the domestic market each year. Since Rolls Royce cars are made to order, and exclusively manufactured in the company’s UK facility, the time taken for delivery is between two to three months after a booking.

The Ghost, earlier code-named RR4 and popularly tagged as ‘Baby Rolls Royce’, is smaller in dimensions than the company’s current Phantom model and is aimed at widening the appeal of the brand. “Ghost is a more informal design that broadens the appeal of Rolls Royce cars,” said Colin Kelly, Asia Pacific Regional Director.

Rolls Royce sold 1,212 units of the super-luxury cars last year, in which India accounted for around two per cent of total global sales. As an indication of India’s growing importance for Rolls Royce cars, the interior of the new Ghost incorporates wood sourced from Kerala. “This wood is called the Malabar variety and our preferred clientele like the straight-grain finish the Malabar wood exudes,” says Dan Balmer, product manager of Ghost. The Malabar wood will be used in 15 per cent of the Ghosts that will be rolled out next year. Other variants of wood that will be used in the construction of Rolls Royce’s luxurious interiors are dark wenge wood from Africa, walnut burr and elm cluster sourced from the UK, and the common piano black wood.