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Renault has facelifted the Kwid for Brazil, where it lists at R$82,790 and sells from R$71,090. The same car costs Rs 4.53 lakh in India after a GST cut. Europe never got the petrol version, only its electric derivative, the Dacia Spring.

Bentley has taken the plug-in hybrid system, the front driveshafts and the rear seats out of the Continental GT to build the Supersports: 1,995 kg, 666 hp and rear-wheel drive only. It is the first sub-two-tonne Bentley road car since 1940 and the first two-wheel-drive Continental GT ever, but it is 116 hp down on the GT Speed and half a second slower to 100 km/h. All 500 are sold at £342,900.

Ford is reportedly still developing an off-road Mustang, a lifted, Dakar-style version of the muscle car that could reach production as the Baja. Nothing is confirmed, but reports say a concept shown to dealers in 2024 is still in play, with extra ground clearance, long-travel suspension and, notably, all-wheel drive paired to a V8. Ford has form here, since the Dark Horse SC and Mustang RTR both began as dealer concepts before reaching production.

UST has completed its purchase of a majority stake in Italdesign from the Audi Group, ending sixteen years of Volkswagen ownership. Lamborghini keeps a significant minority and Audi stays on as a client. Italdesign keeps its Moncalieri headquarters, its management and its 1,300 staff, but operational control now sits with a Californian firm of 30,000 people whose speciality is software, not sheet metal.

Heart of Racing boss Ian James is pleased with a Silverstone test for the Aston Martin Valkyrie's first major upgrade, which he called a fact-finding mission focused on gathering data. The development is aimed above all at drivability, with James calling it the key to unlocking the car's speed, and a packed schedule of track tests and wind tunnel sessions now runs toward the 2027 homologation deadline. The updates will stay non-hybrid, keeping the V12.

Statistics Norway counted 4,519 public charging points in Oslo at the end of 2025, and 3,532 of them are slow AC units rated between 3.6 and 43 kW. Nearly half the city's 246,809 cars are now electric. Since 2020 apartment residents have had the right to fit a plug at their own parking space, which is the provision the EU wrote into law and all 27 member states have failed to transpose.

Kai Grünitz, Volkswagen's board member for technical development, says German customers consider the ID. Polo GTI's 175 km/h top speed too low, and that the brand is looking at raising it. The limit is the single-speed transmission rather than the 226 hp. The 1976 Golf GTI reached 182 km/h on 110 hp, and the petrol Polo GTI still on sale does 240 km/h.

Nissan and Honda have signed a joint development agreement covering the main and zone electronic control units in their next-generation cars, plus the operating system, key middleware and vehicle control software that run on them. The first cars carrying the shared stack arrive in fiscal 2029. The two started researching it in August 2024, four months before announcing a merger that fell apart in February 2025.

BYD plans to build small electric cars around X-PACK, the battery pack it developed for its Japan-only Racco kei car, with Europe among the target markets, Nikkei reports. The timing lands on the EU's proposed M1E class, which would count every EU-built electric car under 4.2 metres as 1.3 cars towards a maker's CO2 target. BYD's Hungarian plant makes that qualification realistic.