Car News

Fledging Chinese car maker Qoros won't be headed to Australia in the near future, with the company's vice chairman confirming it has no plans to produce right-hand-drive vehicles in the foreseeable future. Qoros Auto’s Volker Steinwascher confirmed at the Geneva motor show that the brand planned to primarily focus on China initially before progressively expanding across Europe.

The Honda Civic Type R may fail to meet its ambitious performance target of becoming the fastest front-wheel-drive production vehicle around the Nurburgring, a company executive has admitted. When announcing the return of the Civic Type R back in 2012, Honda CEO Takanobu Ito revealed the new-generation hot-hatch was being developed with the goal of becoming the fastest front-wheel-drive car around the ’Ring.

The Maybach name may have been axed as a brand after more than a decade of losses but it will be revived as a badge for a Mercedes-Benz S-Class designed to take on Bentley and Rolls-Royce. Mercedes-Benz had been expected to dip into its limousine history and use the Pullman name for the pinnacle of the company’s flagship, though the S-Class’s chief engineer told Australian media it would instead be Maybach.

The long-awaited Lexus NX compact SUV will make its production debut at the 2014 Beijing auto show, the Japanese luxury car brand has confirmed. The controversially styled sub-RX high-riding crossover will be revealed in full in April - although an image in a presentation has, if true, already given a lot away in terms of how the new NX will look (see below). Lexus Europe vice president Alain Uyttenhoven made the announcement at the 2014 Geneva motor show.

The Maserati Alfieri concept is all but confirmed to be the Italian car manufacturer’s 2+2-seat coupe rival to the Porsche 911, coming in substantially smaller than the Maserati GranTurismo with which it shares its underpinnings.