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When advising buyers what car to go for, one of the first things we ask them is how they'll use it. While Irish drivers are obsessed with diesel power at the moment, petrol cars can make sense depending on your circumstances, especially if you're going for a small car and you don't plan on astronomical annual mileages. Likewise, petrol-electric hybrids are suited more to a city life than one in which you pound the motorways.

So, where does our Golf BlueMotion fit in? Well, in truth, it's driven in and around Dublin city the…

It is Friday, so time to trawl the classifieds to see what it out there and this one caught our eye over in Merlin Motor City on the Kylemore Road in Dublin.

This gorgeous Ford Focus ST 5-door has covered only 33,666 miles since 2006 and has an NCT until July 2012. The colour, gunmetal grey is fantastic and the fact that it is is 5-door means that we can still be practical while still enjoying the fact that this car is quite the hooligan. The 2.5-litre puts out 222hp and 320Nm of torque…

Ever wondered why Google has invested so much time and money in its Street View technologies? Amazingly, the California-based company did not send a fleet of camera cars around the world so you could spy on your neighbour or search for those elusive oddities like alfresco fornication on a college campus. Instead, the technology forms the backbone of Google's driverless car software.

Unless you have been living under a stone recently the Google Cars (as they have become known) are big news and even bigger over the last day or two with the announcement…

Alright, I admit that winter tyres may not have been necessary as yet, though I did feel vilified in having them fitted to our long term test Golf when the temperature plummeted to zero in the middle of December. Then it decided to come back up to a balmier 14 degrees around Christmas Day...

Still, it's only the first week of January and many are predicting cold weather and snow for later this month.

However, I'm not as ready as I was, as one of the tyres suffered a puncture before the holidays. Annoyingly,…

It comes as no surprise that this year's Continental Irish Car of the Year was a hotly coveted honour. It is being contested against the backdrop of an entirely fragmented market. With January looming and the peak of new car sales on the horizon, nabbing Ireland's prestigious award will undoubtedly provide the winner with an invaluable amount of exposure. However, it is not a simple case of the winner takes all. The very fact that some models have made the short list should serve to boost national appeal and manufacturers with a model listed in the top ten should take…

Unless you have jumped into a taxi in one of the larger towns or cities in Ireland recently then you probably won’t have come across the Hyundai Montana. And here in Ireland there really isn’t that much call for vehicles with more than seven seats outside of the taxi business. But are we missing a trick?

A family event in Cork required lots of seats and lots of space, but when you go beyond seven people your options are few. The problem, too, with a lot of seven seaters is that with all the…

There's no doubt that, if fuel economy is your top priority and you're a high-mileage driver, then the BlueMotion version of the Golf is the car for you. The official combined consumption figure is 3.8 litres/100km (74.3mpg) and it gets pretty close to that. We're consistently amazed by its ability to avoid fill-ups, even when confined to the environs of Dublin. On the motorway it's peerless.

Though it's not quite peerless, as Volkswagen offers the same 1.6-litre TDI engine in the rest of the Golf range. Sure, you do without a list of further…

They say that you aren’t a real petrol head until you have owned an Alfa Romeo. Well here is three of their finest work for not that much money.

2006 Alfa Romeo Brera 3.2 V6 €10,000

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Here is a car that once upon a time would have set you back around €50,000 and now you can have it for a fifth of that and this one in particular has covered just 36,600 miles in its short life. With 260hp, this Brera is not short of poke and it has four-wheel…

It's the show that gives two fingers to any economic crisis; the ninth edition of Top Marques Monaco held at Monte Carlo's Grimaldi Forum is under way, showcasing some of the most exotic and expensive offerings the automotive world has seen.

Alongside luxury boats, limited edition watches, rare jewels and art, at Top Marques the super-rich can view and even experience the latest Ferrari, Lamborghini and Aston Martin, but also the truly low volume supercar manufacturers. Think Pagani, Koenigsegg, Savage, GTA, Roding, Fisker and new Slovenian supercar builder Tushek. For those needing to upstage…

The Cobo Center opens its doors wide to the media on January 9 for the 2012 Detroit Auto Show. Here's a preview:

Acura

Honda's luxury US division will use the North American International Auto Show to debut a new ILX concept saloon. The Honda Civic-based four-door saloon will be available with either a 2.0- or 2.4-litre four pot or the Civic Hybrid's powertrain (in America only).

A near-production ready second-generation RDX crossover will also be displayed that noticeably, in an automotive world dominated by downsizing, will swap the turbocharged four-cylinder engine of old for a more fuel efficient V6.

The…