News in brief

Swedish firm Saab is to become General Motors' centre of excellence for transverse engine four-wheel-drive development. So impressed are bosses with the company's XWD technology, Saab now has responsibility for sharing it with other marques in the group - including Vauxhall and Cadillac. It already carries out all work on GM's turbocharged engines.

SCIENTISTS in the US have found a way of turning plant sugar into fuel. Chemists have been looking for a cheap green alternative to oil for years, and believe they have the answer. Fructose - the chemical that sweetens apples - was converted into a fuel which can be burned to produce 40 per cent more energy than ethanol.

A £3MILLION plan to erect 200 bilingual road signs in English and Gaelic in the Highlands has been lost in translation. The local authority has slammed the signs on Scotland's west coast as a waste of money. "There are bigger road safety issues than bilingual signs," stormed Ardchatten Community Councillor Lewis Morrison.

THE Government has joined the growing call for Electronic Stability Control (ESC) to be fitted to all cars by publishing its own research on the subject. A Department for Transport report says vehicles with ESC are 25 per cent less likely to be involved in a fatal accident than those without. That would mean around 380 less death crashes in the UK every year, said transport minister Stephen Ladyman.

A NEW false leg has been made by the Transport Research Laboratory to replicate vehicle impacts and test pop-up bonnets on cars. The legform impactor is exactly the same size, weight and fleshiness as a human limb, and will help developers devise systems that differentiate between pedestrians and other objects such as animals or dustbins.