Other motoring news in brief
Limited edition Impreza
HOT ON THE heels of Ford’s announcement of a 500bhp Focus, Subaru has joined forces with the blue oval’s previous favourite partner Cosworth to come up with a limited edition 395bhp Cosworth Impreza STI CS400.
Subaru claims a 0-100km/h time of 3.7 seconds, over a second quicker than the standard WRX STI. To anchor the power, Subaru has teamed up with F1 brake supplier AP Racing, which also supplies brands like Bugatti.
Only 75 cars are planned for production and sales are targeted solely at the UK. Neville Matthews of Subaru Ireland said there are no plans to import any to Ireland.
VW buys design
VOLKSWAGEN HAS agreed to buy a 90.1 per cent stake in Italdesign-Giugiaro.
Giugiaro, the design house that helped develop VW’s Golf, has annual sales of about €100 million and has worked on more than 120 car models since it was founded in 1968.
VW is seeking to expand its range to achieve sales of more than 10 million vehicles a year by 2018, when the manufacturer hopes to overtake Toyota as the world’s largest carmaker.
Dispute over NRA funding
THE NATIONAL ROADS Authority has been denied extra funding it requested to repair damage caused by the bad winter weather.
The Authority requested an additional €25 million in an application made on January 11th. In it the NRA said it was concentrating on keeping key routes open and aware of “Minister Gormley’s repeated assurances that there were no budget constraints”.
Additional funding was requested from the Department of Transport because of high spending on de-icing materials, the cost of which also rose significantly.
Last night a spokesman for the department said the NRA had been allocated a total roads budget of €1.15 billion for 2010. He said that no further funds were available. However, the NRA has said the €48 million allocated for maintenance this year was approximately half of what is required.
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