News

Robert Shwartzman will drive Peugeot's revised 9X8 in the World Endurance Championship from 2027, closing a season in which the 2025 Indianapolis 500 polesitter had no race programme at all after Prema pulled out of IndyCar. He already has a Hypercar win, taken at Austin in 2024 with AF Corse's Ferrari. The 9X8 has 29 starts, four podiums and no wins.

Ferrari brought the second of its permitted engine upgrades, ADUO 2, to Monza, but it did not close the power gap to Mercedes, and team principal Fred Vasseur admits the car is still “missing pure power.” Ferrari was 5.6 km/h slower than Mercedes in top speed at Monza, and Vasseur says the team never expected ADUO to recover the deficit, with the real fix only coming with the 2027 power unit rules. Even Ferrari-powered Haas found the upgrade a minor step next to its aerodynamic gains.

Six companies of the Siegen-based Wahl group have filed for insolvency in self-administration, putting 31 sites and around 1,000 jobs into a restructuring. It comes eight days after Berlin's Autohaus König, the largest Renault retailer in Germany, filed with 82 locations and 1,200 employees. Wahl had gone from five brands to sixteen in two years, adding MG, Xpeng, Leapmotor and Maxus on the way.

Audi has settled the outline of a restructuring that ends its double four-ring operation in China. FAW-Audi takes the design, production and sales of every four-ring model, while SAIC Audi is left with the letters-only AUDI brand. It is a reversal for a joint venture set up in 2021 specifically to build four-ring Audis, and it lands as Audi's Chinese profit collapses.

Polestar has released a single image of the Formula 2030, the first concept drawn from scratch under design chief Philipp Römers. The full car arrives in October, but the styling only reaches buyers with the next Polestar 2 in 2027 and the Polestar 7, the brand's first Europe-built car, in 2028.

Valentino Rossi will not complete his Nordschleife permit this year. BMW M Motorsport confirmed the calendar could not be made to work, and the September NLS double-header lands on exactly the same three days as the San Marino Grand Prix at Misano, where Rossi runs a MotoGP team. The October finale collides with Indonesia. His Nürburgring 24 Hours debut now hangs on a tight 2027 run-up.

Skoda chief executive Klaus Zellmer has put the Superb's future in doubt, saying saloons and estates are not growing and that the brand is examining whether one model could cover both the Octavia and Superb segments. It comes as the Volkswagen Group prepares to halve its model range by 2035, and as Skoda posts its strongest half-year on record with an 8.5 percent return on sales.

Volkswagen has agreed to sell Volkswagen Osnabrück GmbH to the investment firm Aurelius and the State of Lower Saxony, with car production ending in summer 2027. The buyers plan an air-defence project with Israel's Rafael, covering launchers, generators and military vehicles. It is the second attempt: Qatar, holder of 17 percent of Volkswagen's voting rights, blocked a direct Volkswagen deal in July.

Audi has revealed the production A2 e-tron with three battery sizes, four power outputs from 170 to 326 hp and rear-wheel drive throughout. The 646 km WLTP headline comes from the 231 hp car with an 84 kWh NMC pack, while the record 12.8 kWh per 100 km belongs to the 190 hp version on a 61 kWh LFP battery, rated at 515 km. Deliveries start in December 2026.