A sleeker, more “urban-friendly” all-new Kia Sportage will make its debut at next month’s Geneva Motor Show, the automaker revealed today.

Its “bold, athletic, and sporty” design wears the brand’s new nose that’s complimented by more pronounced front shoulders and rear haunches. Swept back headlights flank the prominent Kia-badged grille up front. Deep character lines can be seen along the lower passenger doors, as well as across the rear hatch.

As a whole, the Sportage is longer, wider, and lower than the outgoing edition and promises more cargo and passenger space inside. Ride quality is said to be vastly improved thanks to the longer wheelbase.

Powertrains have yet to be announced, but as it stands, both diesel and gas mills are slated for production once sales start later this year.

Check back for more straight from Geneva in the coming weeks.

Source: Kia

It may be late to the four-door coupe party, but Audi officials promise it’ll be well worth the wait. Our spy shooters caught the German brand’s upcoming A7 undergoing a battery of winter testing in Europe. Unfortunately, thanks to haste of Audi’s engineers, only two of the shots really show the car’s profile and size.

It’s poised to compete head-to-head with the Mercedes-Benz CLS and newly released BMW 5 Series GT and is something of an A6/A8 hybrid build. The platform is said to come from the next A6, while its powertrains from both the A6 and bigger A8. Inside its cabin will be all the usual high-end Audi features.

The best idea of what the A7 will look like comes via the automaker’s Sportback Concept first shown at the 2009 Detroit show. Its sleek styling was largely welcomed by both the press and public. Like the 5 Series GT, the Sportback touts a five-door hatch configuration, a feature most likely to be found on the production A7.

Over the last few years, sales of pickups for personal use have dropped dramatically. It’s been a long, slow road to recovery in this country, and we still haven’t seen truck sales improve. Making things worse, guys who work in construction are among the most dedicated to buying pickups for use on the job, and there isn’t a lot of that going on right now, either.

How did truckmakers respond to this sudden, dramatic, and prolonged change in the marketplace? Instead of sticking solely with the mainstream-market formula, they’re focusing on catering to the specific needs of truck people. That helps explain the interesting grouping of vehicles for the latest Truck of the Year event. Four qualified: the Ford F-150 SVT Raptor, the Ford Transit Connect, the Ram Heavy Duty, and the Toyota Tundra 4.6-liter work truck.

First contender is the off-road race-ready Ford F-150 SVT Raptor. Instead of taking the street-biased high-performance route of the Lightning, the design team looked at the strengths of the truck platform and redefined the idea of high performance. The Raptor is ideally suited to romping over the ruts and sand of the Baja 1000 and only gets better the faster you go. And even though the extended-cab powered by a 5.4-liter V-8 is an impressive combination, we hear a crew cab and 400-plus-horsepower, 6.2-liter V-8 are coming.

2010 Dodge Ram 2500 Heavy Duty Front Three Quarters Driver
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Some of you may wonder why on earth there’s a little van in Truck of the Year. The Ford Transit Connect is no kid-toting minivan. This is a van built for work, with a 1600-pound payload, comparable to that of any half-ton truck on the market. This van, which has been sold in Europe for many years, has been put through truck-durability testing and is ready to take on full-size vans for a piece of that market.

For those who need to be able to tow a fifth-wheel trailer or carry 5000 pounds of equipment in the bed, the Ram Heavy Duty arrives for 2010 with a revised platform, all-new sheetmetal, redesigned interior, and several innovations. These trucks are available as 3/4- and one-ton models, plus 4500 and 5500 trucks for even more capability.