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After selling it on and off in the US for nearly seven decades, Volkswagen has decided to squash its iconic Beetle.

From September, private buyers of cars, SUVs, motorcycles, scooters or other two- and four-wheelers have to pay more for them. This is because from the beginning of this month the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDA), the controlling body for all insurance in India, has ordered that at the time of purchasing a car or SUV the buyer will have to buy third-party insurance for three years up front. 

Dimitris Raptis, head of region Asia, China, Pacific and South Africa of BMW Motorrad, who is in charge of the Indian market, chats with t2 about his plans for India and what he expects from the market. Excerpts.

Mahindra & Mahindra will be the first Indian company to build a car that will be right up there with top names like Ferrari and Lamborghini in the high-performance supercar club.

Toyota Kirloskar Motor (TKM) is trying to minimise the environmental impact of its Indian manufacturing unit in Bidadi in Karnataka. The Japanese parent company, which has 56 plants worldwide, has initiated the Toyota 2050 Environmental Challenge.

How many models of anything at all can you think of that have remained in widespread use for the last 50 years?  The Boeing 747 aircraft, which is also known as the Jumbo Jet, or The Queen of the Skies, is one of the very few that was first made in 1968 and is still in use today in an industry where making money depends a lot on how good the technology being used is. Of course, the Boeing has been updated over the years, but the basic form remains the same to this day.

It has never been this good for Indian riders dreaming about a performance- or cruising-oriented motorcycle. With a will to stretch the budget beyond that needed to buy a 100cc-150cc bike, they now get to choose from a whole bunch of more powerful machines starting with engine capacities just short of 250cc and going up to 500cc.

Driving in central Calcutta on a Sunday afternoon, there was reason to do a double take. In the white compact SUV alongside was a little boy. He was standing in the space between the front passenger seat and the glove box, and was just tall enough for his head to be above the level of the dashboard on which he was resting his arms.

How often do you drive in rush hour traffic, clutching and declutching ever so often as you are forced to shift gears? And how many times in such situations, as you get increasingly fatigued, have you wished that you had a car with an automatic transmission so that you could bypass this chore. Well, you are certainly not alone.

Jaguar Land Rover unveiled the latest versions of two of its SUVs — the Range Rover Sport, which starts at Rs 99.48 lakh at the showroom, and the Range Rover, which starts at Rs 1.74 crore.