Toyota’s mini Camry - the new Toyota Corolla has made it’s European debut at the Helsinki Motor Show 2006 in Finland. While we’ve already seen this Corolla when it made it’s world debut at the Beijing Motor Show not too long ago, these photos are probably the first that show clearly the interior of the new car. As previously mentioned, the sedan Corolla will continue to keep it’s name, while the hatchback has been reincarnated as the Toyota Auris.

Toyota seems to have taken a leaf out of Volvo’s design book with the new Corolla’s silver floating center console panel. It’s a good thing the car has a drastically new interior as that’s where you’ll be spending most of your time in, because the exterior looks like a mere evolution of the old Corolla Altis we have running around our streets.

More photos after the jump.

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Malcolm Bricklin, who wanted to bring in Chery vehicles into the USA via his company Visionary Vehicles has abandoned his plan, some say because of the news of Daimler Chrysler talking to Chery to produce a small car for them - i.e.: the Dodge Hornet. But the actual story was Chery and Bricklin could not come to an agreement of how to use a US$200 million seed by billionaire George Soros. Malcolm Bricklin has been known to be the one who is daring enough to bring foreign auto brands into the US, some of his better stories have been Subaru, and his worst is likely Yugo.

However, Chery officials have said it still has plans to enter the US market, and Chery suppliers have confirmed that Chery is talking with several potential investors about developing and selling a Chery-branded car in the United States (which isn’t exactly what Mr. Bricklin intended - he wants the cars to be badged Visionary Vehicles), though an agreement is not likely to be reached anytime soon.

Shown above is Chery’s recent Chery A3 concept car, with one more photo of it after the jump.

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Another concept vehicle which made it’s debut at the Los Angeles Auto Show is the Hyundai HCD10 Hellion Concept, a three-door compact SUV looking like it was fishes straight out of the Alien series of movies.

Hyundai used a tough safety cage concept (ala smart) to build the HCD10 Hellion Concept, using three ultra-lightweight structural ribs to create the HCD10 Hellion’s safety cage. These ribs connect to a suspended surfboard-shaped spine. This is probably what contributed to the car’s pretty much organic look.

The Hyundai HCD10 Hellion Concept was also designed not just too look tough, but act tough. Hyundai designed it to be a proper offroader, with short overhangs to allow more aggressive approach angles. The car has a removable canvas soft-top roof, but even though removed, the passangers are protected by some kind of cross bar.

The HCD10 Hellion Concept is painted with a paint scheme called Dakar Gold, to honor the famous Paris-Dakar 4WD rally and it’s influence on it’s design. Wheels are huge 20-inch aluminium 2-piece wheels, and are Teflon-coated for hardiness against tough environments.

On the interior, the same organic-looking ribs that are apparent from the outside are also visible on the inside, giving the occupants a sense of safety. An overhead console is suspended, which houses integrated interior lighting and a drop-down LCD monitor for rear-seat entertainment.

Enough about the looks - this concept is powered by a 3.0 liter V6 CRDi engine making 236 horsepower and 450Nm of torque.

More photos and detailed specs after the jump.

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Shortly after BMW introduced it’s new second generation BMW X5, Porsche has released details of the new 2007 model Porsche Cayenne, stuffed with new features including improved engines as well new technologies that give the sporty SUV better ride and handling. Check out my post after the jump for more details on what’s new with the 2007 Porsche Cayenne.

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Mazda’s Nagare Concept seeks to showcase Mazda’s future design language under the leadership of it’s newly appointed global design director, Laurens van den Acker. When designing the Mazda Nagare Concept, Mazda used the concept of flow - inspired by the movement of nature’s elements - it’s designers sought to capture motion, energy and light and embed it into the Nagare’s lines.

“Mazda doesnt produce concept cars to spin its wheels, and while some are more forward-looking than others, we simply do not create pure flights of fantasy. We develop these ideas to demonstrate what we really intend to build and sell,” says Mazda design director Franz von Holzhausen. A future Mazda hatchback or coupe might look like this. I think it looks something like the Calamari Cruisers of the Star Wars universe.

More photos after the jump, including a little peek into the interior through the glass windscreen from the LA Auto Show thanks to reader Syahrizal Salleh.

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Other than our delight in a new MINI-killer Audi, the announcement that the new Audi A1 will be produced at Volkswagen’s Forest plant in Brussels, Belgium offers hope to the 5,300 employees there who risk ending up jobless, though full time production of the car will only require 3,000 employees. So the 2,300 others still have something to worry about. Volkswagen had originally planned to shut down the Brussels plant in early July this year, and had announced late last month that it would be cutting down it’s Brussels plant staff down to 1,500 workers, because it was transferring Golf production to two plants in Germany. Feeling a combination of fear and anger, the workers went on strike.

Back to the matter of the little car, artist’s impressions by Autobild of Germany have been around since mid 2006. Volkswagen group head Bernd Pischetsrieder expressed his concern that the price of the A1, set to be based on the Volkswagen Fox platform and will be the smallest Audi ever, might be too close to the Audi A3 if priced at a premium in relative to it’s size. But if priced cheaper, it might damage Audi’s prestige.

The little Audi A1 is set to be released as a 2009 model. I have doubts about Audi’s large trapezoidal shield grille design working well on a small car, but imagine one with a high output version of a 1.4 TFSI. Yum.

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Acura’s designers seem to have been going the opposite way of Bangleification - while everyone else are going for complicated surfaces, Acura have taken a few pages out of the Skoda design manual - the new Acura Advanced Sedan Concept looks like it’s made out of a few pieces of sheet metal welded together.

According to Dave Merek, head of Acura’s new Advanced Design Studio in Los Angeles, the primary purpose of this concept was to produce a car which would look like an ultra luxurious sedan two generations ahead of current design languages. Merek and his team’s interpretation results in a sporty looking car that’s low in stance yet has a pretty high ceiling line, presumably to allow for greater interior room, with pronounced wheel arches that contain huge 22 inch wheels at the front and 23 inch wheels at the rear, and futuristic jewel-like headlamps and taillamps.

More photos after the jump.

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Could this be American Honda Motors idea of a new Honda CR-X replacement? The original Honda CR-X was launched as the Honda Ballade Sports CR-X or the Honda Civic CR-X, depending on region. The moniker CR-X itself stood for Civic Racing eXperiment, and was sold in the American market as an economical two-seater hatchback, and in other regions as a 4-seater.

Honda designed the new REMIX Concept to give you a fighter jet-like driving experience with the wrap-around canopy of the car. The platform is a front wheel drive, and is designed to take in a four-cylinder engine (high revving K20A?) and preferably a 6-speed manual transmission. Despite the existence of the 3-door Honda Civic Type R available in Europe, that car is not available in the US market. The car was developed by American Honda Motor’s market research arm Honda R&D Americas, Inc - who have so far had alot of freedom in designing Honda cars because of the size of the US market, evident by US-only Honda models like the Ridgeline pick-up truck, Pilot, Element, and the US-market Odyssey.

More photos after the jump.

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Jaguar’s mid-sized luxury sedan contender, the S-type will now be called the Jaguar XF. To be built at Jaguar’s Jaguar’s Advanced Manufacturing Centre at Castle Bromwich in Birmingham, UK and set to be released in late 2007, it unifies Jaguar’s model naming conventions - it already has new models called the XJ, XK and the XKR.

No shots of the actual model are available yet, so let’s have a look at the Jaguar R-D6 Concept showcased in the year 2003, featuring an S-type-like grille, and Jaguar’s lightweight structure stretegy. The R-D6 weighs only 1,500kg, light for it’s size, makig it easy for it’s 2.7 liter twin turbodiesel’s 230hp and 500Nm of torque to push it along.

More photos after the jump.

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