You’d expect a little more competition from the two Detroit giants, but actually Ford’s gesture is really cool. On GM’s 100th anniversary, Ford decided to congratulate their rivals by strategically opening and closing specific blinds on the south side of the WHQ building, to show the message “Happy 100 GM”. Like we said, it’s very cool to see, that in these special moments, big companies like Ford decide to let rivalry aside and show their appreciation. Congratulations, Ford, and Happy Birthday, GM!

Read More: "Happy Birthday GM from Ford"

Happy Birthday to us! Exactly one year ago, on March 18th, 2007, the first post was published on Auto Unleashed and now, one year later, we’d like to thank all our readers and partners which made this year an extraordinary experience for us and hope for you too. We got to meet some very cool people, we made a lot of new friends, we got to the Geneva Motor Show and overall, it was an unbelievable year!

Also, we’ve learned a lot and tried all the time to make the Auto Unleashed experience as interesting as possible for you, our readers. We tried to bring as much new and interesting info as possible, last autumn we brought you the Photo Gallery and now we’re trying to add a lot of cool new features. Last week we’ve created the My Yahoo, NetVibes and iGoogle Homepages Tabs, where you can get the latest new from the best resources available online, including, of course, Auto Unleashed

Besides this, we’ve also started working on two new and very interesting sections on Auto Unleashed. First one is the wallpapers section, where we already started adding wallpapers that will make your desktop a whole lot more attractive. And the second one is the press release section, where we’ll publish all the official press releases made by the most important companies in the auto industry. The sections are new, so there’s not so much content, but we promise that they’ll be updated every day.

So, again, Happy Birthday to us and a big ‘Thanks’ to everyone who, in one way or the other, was part of Auto Unleashed and, for this year to come, we’d just like to tell you that you haven’t seen nothing yet!

The Auto Unleashed Team

Read More: "Auto Unleashed’s first anniversary!"

It seems that November 9 was a celebration day in the auto industry, because, after VW celebrated its 15 millionth Passat, Honda UK is celebrating its 1 millionth Civic produced at the Swindon plant. The first Civic was produced here on September 19, 1994 and Honda the cars go to over 60 countries worldwide. The anniversary model was a red Honda Civic Type-R, which will go to a British customer.

Ken Keir, Managing Director of Honda (UK) and Senior Vice President of Honda Motor Europe stated:“Civic remains the cornerstone of our UK and European success. Customers love its innovative design and build quality, which not only retains a huge loyal customer base, but is key to us winning new sales across Europe”
Read More: "UK Honda Civic No. 1,000,000"

On November 9, at the Volkswagen plant in Emden, Germany, the 15 millionth Passat produced worldwide rolled out the production line. We have to admit, this is an impressive number. The first Passat was produced in 1973, and the current generation is the sixth. The first generation was produced between 1973-1981, the second one between 1981-1988, the third between 1988-1994, the fourth between 1995-1997, the fifth between 1996-2005 and the current generation debuted in 2005.

The special 15 millionth Passat was a 105 hp Variant BlueMotion 1.9 TDI in arctic blue silver metallic and Volkswagen decided to donate it to DKMS (German Bone Marrow Donor Center).
Read More: "15 millionth Volkswagen Passat produced"

First presented as a concept at the 1993 Detroit Auto Show, the Plymouth Prowler was put into production from 1997 to 2002, when it was discontinued. To celebrate the 10 years that passed from when the first Prowler rolled out, Chrysler will host an anniversary celebration on August 16, from 5 to 10 p.m. EDT at the Walter P. Chrysler Museum.

About 175 Prowlers are expected to take part at the celebration, a pretty good number if you ask me, with 11,500 being the total number of cars sold in the US and Canada between 1997 and 2002.
Read More: "Plymouth Prowler 10 year celebration"

This year, the Mercedes tuner Brabus will celebrate its 30th anniversary. And what better way to celebrate it, but by presenting a super car. They announced that at this year’s Frankfurt Auto Show in September, they’ll be unveiling a “wolf in sheep’s clothes”. And knowing some of Brabus’ latest creations, we believe them. Brabus also presented a teaser photo of the car, and we assume it’ll be an insanely powerful C Class.

Read More: "Brabus to celebrate 30 years of tuning with supercar"

Mercedes’ factory tuner, AMG celebrates 40 years of existence. The company was founded in an old mill in Burgstall (near Affalterbach) by Hans Werner Aufrecht (A) and his partner Erhard Melcher (M); the third letter in the company name (G) came from Aufrecht’s birthplace, Großaspach.

The company has grown into a supplier of exclusive high-performance cars with some 750 employees, an extensive model range comprising 18 different AMG cars, customers across the world and a brand name which has gained a high level of recognition. The turnkey in AMG’s history was 1990 when they signed the agreement with Daimler-Benz AG, with Mercedes-Benz C 36 AMG being the first jointly developed vehicle to result from the cooperation agreement, in 1993. Read More: "40 Years of AMG"