SEAT

The Volkswagen Group could be set to offload the Bugatti marque to Rimac, according to reports out of Europe. As reported by Car Magazine, the prestigious French performance brand – which Volkswagen purchased in 1998 – will be acquired by the Croatian electric sports car specialist. In return, it's believed Rimac will give Volkswagen unrestricted access to its all-electric platform.

The Volkswagen Group’s Spanish subsidiary, Seat (pronounced say-art), has spent €1.1 billion developing and producing its new Volkswagen Golf spinoff hatch and wagon in Barcelona. Design-wise the Leon sports a hexagonal grille flanked by angry LED headlights, a sculpted body, a raking window line with large C-pillar, and 'coast-to-coast' tail lights. The coefficient of drag is around eight per cent better than before.

Germany's three major automakers, the BMW Group, Daimler (parent of Mercedes-Benz) and the Volkswagen Group, have been fined a total of €100 million ($163 million) for forming a cartel to buy certain steel products. The Bundeskartellamt, Germany's competition commission, says the three car companies met twice a year with steel makers between 2004 and 2013 to set uniform surcharges for the long steel they purchased. Illegally set prices were in use until 2016.

The facelifted Seat Ateca has been spied during development testing in the Austrian Alps, ahead of an anticipated launch sometime next year. Despite the camouflage wrap adorning the front end it doesn't look like there will be drastic changes for the Spanish crossover, likely limited to revised bumper details and rejigged headlights.

According to an investigation by the EU's anti-trust regulator, BMW, Daimler and Volkswagen worked together between 2006 and 2014 to stymie competition in developing emissions cleaning technology. The so-called "circle of five", which included engineers from Audi and Porsche, are said to have "coordinated their AdBlue dosing strategies, AdBlue tank size and refill ranges ... with the common understanding that they thereby limited AdBlue-consumption and exhaust gas cleaning effectiveness".