Motoring: Land Rover’s Christmas Cabin; Audi A3 celebration; Aston Martin Lagonda

LAND Rover has banished stories of declining sales to embrace the Christmas spirit in a new video promoting its Discovery Sport.

The film shows how a cosy wooden cabin could be flat-packed and stowed in the SUV’s luggage space and transported to a cool lakeside spot for an ideal festive getaway.

The cleverly designed cabin has space for two adults to sleep snugly in temperatures as low as -20°C.

Land Rover engineers carefully used every bit of the vehicle’s 1,698-litre rear load space to carry the wooden cabin’s components. Even the glove box, cup holders and door bins were filled with nuts, bolts and festive decorations fit for Santa himself.

There are even spaces for the mince pies and Rudolph’s carrots.

The Christmas cabin was tested in Land Rover’s own cold-climate chamber, in which all Land Rovers are subjected to sub-freezing temperatures, by mountaineer and 12-times Everest climber Kenton Cool. It was then transported by Discovery Sport – not sleigh – to its final secret location in the heart of the frozen wilderness.

Kenton Cool said: “There is a growing trend for off-grid living and ‘wilderness cabins’ and only Land Rover could create a ‘go anywhere’ cabin like this. The design is cleverly engineered and incredibly robust, making it perfect for remote locations across the world.”

The Discovery Sport has been on sale for two years, and is Land Rover’s biggest-selling model, with more than 100,000 vehicles sold so far in 2016.

Helen Ali, Vehicle Package Team Leader, said: “We wanted to create a Christmas  cabin for Santa, in a truly Land Rover way. The spacious and versatile Discovery Sport was perfect for this project. The seats can be folded flat at the push of a button from the load space, which is wide and square and there are plenty of hidden storage spaces like the area under the front cup-holders.

“Building a cabin that utilised all these features was a lot of fun. We could have built this in one of our bigger models, but we wanted to prove just how versatile the baby of the Discovery family truly is.”

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The Audi A3 celebrates its 20th anniversary Still in a celebratory mood, Audi is celebrating the 20th anniversary of its versatile Audi A3.

Debuting at the 1996 Frankfurt Motor Show, the premium compact is available in a choice of four body styles, four drive systems and a broad selection of trim lines.

The car was developed from the ground up on the basis of the VW Golf IV platform, which followed in 1997. It was initially available exclusively as a three-door hatchback in three trim lines and with four different petrol and diesel engines.

In September 1998, Audi brought quattro permanent all-wheel drive to the compact segment for the first time in the A3. A five-door variant joined the model series in March 1999.

And the brand reached a milestone with the first generation of the high-performance Audi S3 in the spring of that same year; the 1.8 litre, inline four-cylinder engine with turbocharging and five valves per cylinder produced 210PS.

The split grille still used in the second-generation Audi A3 was replaced in 2005 by the Singleframe, which went on to become the brand’s defining design element. Audi also expanded the A3 family to include its first open-topped variant: The A3 Cabriolet launched in 2008 with a classic cloth top.

Now in its third generation- and with the addition of a saloon – each and every variant of the car has received a technology update.

The Audi RS 3 Sportback is the spearhead of the model series. The first generation was launched in 2011 with a 340PS, five-cylinder engine. The second edition of the RS 3 Sportback with 367PS followed in 2015.

At this year’s Paris Motor Show, Audi presented the RS 3 Saloon powered by a 2.5 TFSI engine with 400PS, making it the most powerful five-cylinder engine on the market.

The car has gone on to become a global player, having conquered the roads of more than 100 sales markets. Audi produces the Audi A3, A3 Sportback, A3 Sportback e-tron and A3 Sportback g-tron models at its site in Ingolstadt.
 
In 2001, the Audi Group expanded portions of A3 production with a facility in Győr, Hungary. Today, the Audi A3 Saloon and A3 Cabriolet come off the assembly line there. Audi produces the A3 Sportback and the A3 Saloon for the Chinese market at its factory in Foshan.

Total production volume since the car made its debut 20 years ago is more than four million.

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A rare 1991 Series 4 Aston Martin Lagonda An incredibly rare example of the car that defined the excesses of the 1980s has gone on the sale in specialist markets.

In fact, the Aston Martin Lagonda in question is a Series 4 example from 1991.  Offered for sale by specialist supercar sales and service agents, SVR, it is one of only 105 made during the three-year production run of the Series 4 model.

The car was one of the first production cars in the world to feature computer management and a digital instrumentation panel. This particular Lagonda also features the upgraded fuel injection system for its 5.2 litre V8 powerplant.

The final run of Lagondas to be produced, the Series 4 was introduced at the 1987 Geneva Motor Show, featuring slight alterations by the car’s original designer, William Towns. These included the rounding of the car’s sharp edges and the pop-up headlights replaced with the iconic triple stack arrangement, either side of the grille, the most obvious changes.

This extremely rare Lagonda – the last model to carry the name of Aston Martin’s luxury brand until the limited-run Lagonda Taraf was released in 2014 – is finished in royal blue bodywork with a cream leather and ash interior and also features cruise control, electric door mirrors and windows and a rear sunroof.  

With 20.340 miles on the clock it can be yours at a cool £95,000.
                                                                                                                                                                       

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