Rome - Italian car m

Hamburg - As the credit crisis slices into global car sales, some of the world's most exclusive automobile manufacturers are weathering the storm with aplomb.

Their customers are people so super-rich that the economic downtown dents neither their income or desire to own the most expensive luxury vehicles money can buy.

While former financial high-flyers struggle to offload their BMW and Mercedes-Benz limousines, elitist British maker Aston Martin based in rural Warwickshire reports a surge of interest in high-end models.

Tokyo - Images of the third generation Toyota Prius have been revealed on the internet months prior to the official debut at the Detroit Motor Show in January 2009, showing minor design modifications such as a more aggressive looking bonnet with a centrally positioned nose cone.

Most of the changes are technical with Toyota confirming on its blog site that the images are real and that further details will be revealed in Detroit.

Cologne, Germany  - A modified Audi A4 B7 quattro has achieved a world speed record of 327.2 kilometres per hour running on an alternative bio-gas fuel processed from grass, the German technical testing authority (TUeV) Rhineland has announced.

"We wanted to give the debate on alternative fuels impetus by demonstrating that driving fun and ecology are not mutually exclusive," said Dr Stefan Behrning, who oversaw the project, conducted on a test track at Papenburg in northwestern Germany.

Hamburg  - Smart car-to-car communication will one day make traffic jams obsolete and significantly improve road safety. That is the vision of several major car makers who recently presented the technology under realistic driving conditions at a test track in Germany.

Several cars, motorcycles and a truck could be seen communicating with each other at the Opel test track in Dudenhofen Germany based on wireless WLAN technology.