Land Rover’s 2012 ‘Go Beyond’ Bursary has been awarded to ‘Pushing The Limits’ – a team supporting a disabled adventurer’s plans to encourage our understanding of the geography on our doorstep and to show that exploration is within everyone’s reach, whatever their ability. Andy Campbell will be taking this Land Rover 110 from the UK and follow the River Danube from Ulm in Germany to the Black Sea. The team will use social media to get suggestions for detours to explore areas of geographical interest, which will demonstrate the ‘go anywhere’ capabilities of both the Land Rover and its driver, Andy Campbell.

Here’s an interesting 60 year celebration to come out of our Diamond Jubilee shenanigans. The AA is to reintroduce the Highland Patrol to Scotland. Originally started in 1953, the Highland Patrol were known as ‘the troopers of the north’ and were introduced due to the increasing tourist traffic to the north of Scotland. Traffic, it would seem, that would have a propensity to break down or get stuck in the snow!

Working north of the Caledonian Canal, it was the bad weather and difficult road conditions that took up most of the Patrol’s time – there not being any other 4x4s on the roads apart from the AA’s Land Rovers or Austin Gypsys one can assume. Hard to believe that, back in the Fifties, motorists in difficulty would gain assistance by calling from an AA telephone box, which would be put through to the Road Service Centre… which was actually a large static caravan at Millburn, Inverness.

With new models arriving on the scene, Mitsubishi has a job on its hands keeping the successful L200 pick-up in the news. The answer it seems is to underline the L200’s ‘lifestyle’ pick-up characteristics, rather than the utility working side of things targeted by the new Isuzu D-Max. Enter the limited edition L200 Barbarian Black and its ‘striking new moody image’. This model has a black satin roof, sports grille, resin guard, wing mirrors and door handles. The limited edition is topped off with black 17inch alloy wheels and new ‘carbon effect’ leather seats. This model is £1000 (ex VAT) over the standard price of the L200, making the manual version £23,899 and the automatic £25,299.

A new global colour called Ginger Ale announced the arrival of the latest version of Ford’s best-selling Kuga SUV. Apparently Ginger Ale has a ‘subtle green hue to reflect its active outdoor capabilities’. You couldn’t make this up, could you – well, actually someone obviously has. More useful is the hands-free automatic tailgate lift and rear seats that fold flat at the touch of a button, and gives the vehicle an increased luggage capacity of 82 litres – a development that seems highly sensible for a family car like the Kuga. Ford’s voice-activated in-car connectivity system SYNC is also now available on the Kuga. This features the Emergency Assistance option, which enables SYNC to help occupants place a call to the emergency services directly in the event of an accident. The new Kuga will be on sale in the UK by the end of the year.