Skoda voted most beautiful

Car lovers in the Czech Republic are nothing if not patriotic. In a television poll on the eve of the country's major motor show, they picked the Czech-built Skoda Octavia station wagon as the "most beautiful car in the world". The Skoda received 46,084 votes, ahead of the Ferrari F430, the Peugeot 407 station wagon, the BMW 6-Series, the Mercedes-Benz SLK and the Volkswagen Passat. The same Skoda is the Czech Republic's 2005 car of the year. It also won the country's national design award.

New Mitsubishi announced

The replacement for the Mitsubishi Diamante sedan will be known as the Mitsubishi 380. The car, which will replace the Galant and Diamante, will go on sale here in November in a range of five models. Peter Wilkins, sales and marketing manager for Mitsubishi Motors New Zealand says: "[The name] Mitsubishi 380 reflects the fact the car will have a 3.8-litre engine and is an indication of the relative size of the car." He says the new car is equal to or bigger than its major Australian-built competitors, the Holden Commodore and Ford Falcon.

Multi-tasking under pressure

Racing and rally car drivers are the equal of fighter pilots when it comes to multi-tasking, tests at Otago University have shown. Students at the second New Zealand MotorSport Academy were tested on a device known as the Wombat, which requires them to multi-task in a high pressure environment. "Two of the nine students, both girls, exceeded the performance standard for pilots, and another two equalled the standard," says Steven Kennedy, chairman of the MotorSport New Zealand Scholarship Trust. The Wombat programme is believed to be the only one of its type for young drivers in the world.

BMW 3 safest luxury car

The outgoing BMW 3 Series tops its category in used-car safety ratings issued by the Automobile Association and Land Transport New Zealand. Rating 288 types of vehicle for safety protection in a crash, the guide draws on police reports of more than 1.1 million tow-away crashes here and in Queensland and Western Australia since 1991. The study was carried out by the Monash University Accident Safety Research Centre in Melbourne. It found the E46-model 3 Series to be the safest luxury car.

Old Hyundai most reliable

The mid-size Hyundai Sonata sedan has been rated the most reliable car in the United States. That's the old model, not the new one. Consumer Reports magazine ranked the Korean-built Sonata tops after a vehicle survey of its 810,000 subscribers. "What's most remarkable," says Hyundai NZ general manager Philip Eustace, "is the ranking is on the previous model Sonata. The new model, which we have just released here, is a huge leap forward." Hyundai's global sales in June reached an all-time monthly high of 232,515 vehicles. Global sales at the end of June are up nearly 16 per cent on the same period last year.

We are the world

Police in Albuquerque, New Mexico, arrested four men on drug-trafficking charges - with the unintentional help of the two-year-old son of one of the men. The father accidentally locked his keys and his son inside his Cadillac and the boy used an emergency service button linked to the car's satellite-navigation system to summon help. Police arrived to find the father still pleading with his son to unlock the door. They became suspicious at the late-night hubbub, and a search of a trailer belonging to another of the men revealed 800kg of marijuana.