This week & the week ahead

What a week! In an effort to expand our reader interaction we will end each week by summarising the week that’s been and discuss the week ahead.

Week Summary

This week has been massive for CarAdvice with readership climbing to well over 15,000 Unique Visitors per day. We also say ‘hi’ to George, the newest member of our team.

The week started with a video of BMW’s new 135i, the twin turbocharged 3.0-litre Beemer also caused some debate.

Although Paul missed his first flight (there is not enough time in a day when you have an Aston Martin DB9 to play with), he still managed to make it to the Land Rover Freelander 2 Launch, held on the Gold Coast.

CarMagazine (UK) showed the world some spy shots of the on-again off-again Ford Focus RS and we begged Ford Australia to tell us that the beast was coming here, unfortunately, they declined to comment as it was still pure speculation.

Ford Australia announced a whole range of updates and extra features for the Falcon, Focus, Territory and Ranger models. Suzuki announced ESP as standard equipment for the Swift Sport.

UK car enthusiasts also caught the upcoming Lexus LF-A testing at the Nürburgring.

We were all horrified watching Chinese cars undergoing crash testing in Germany, while a Victorian farmer managed to beat a speeding ticket using GPS data and Alborz covered his week long experience in a 2007 Kia Rio.

The two rally kings then took centre stage with the 2008 Subaru Impreza WRX STi burning some rubber at the Nurburgring, followed by its arch nemesis, the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution X following in hot pursuit.

Mazda Japan also showed off the Mazda2 MPS. Although we initially reported the new Mazda2 MPS would make its way to Australia, a senior Mazda product manager told us the 2.0-litre turbo Mazda is currently not on the cards, but it may be reconsidered further down the line.

Of course, the big news of the week was our spy shots. By now CarAdvice is synonymous with 2008 Falcon Spyshots, others have claimed to have the first & best spy shots, but such claims can be laughed right off when browsing our extensive spy paraphernalia.

One of our photographers caught the Falcon ute undergoing testing in Melbourne. To cut a long story short, these were the hardest spy photographs for us to get our hands on, as you can see from the photos, our photographer (we like to call him the smoking man) had to put away his camouflage, but in the process he managed to get some really close up shots.

We have been trying very hard to get our hands on some Holden VE Commodore Ute spyshots, and finally, a reader managed to take some spyshots of the VE Ute parked in public! Given the lack of security, it almost made us wonder if Holden were getting jealous of all the Falcon attention. Either way, the Ute is coming soon.

Read about the week ahead.