Vintage Bieffe B-85 Full Face Motorcycle Helmet W/ Visor Red Medium/ 58 on 2040-parts.com

Hot seats: from design to delivery [sponsored]

As the user demands on car interiors are increasingly influenced by their growing design consciousness, so suppliers like Lear strive to bring better-engineered seating to satisfy. 2013 was another big year for Lear, as Jeanette Puig-Pey, its global fabric & leather design manager, enthuses: "At our ‘Design2Perform' event we celebrated the unveiling of our brand new collection, with special emphasis on color and texture and our TeXstyle Enhance product, perfect for customization. Laser etching is part of this offering, it is exclusive to Lear Corporation and can be used to add refined design elements to cloth and leather." A mix of fabric and leather in seating is not new but is often seen by the consumer as a cheaper alternative to full leather.

Let Q modify your Aston Martin

We imagine there were really two options for naming Aston Martin's new personalization program: Q, or something boring like Amalgamated Personalisation & Colour Programme, complete with British spellings that will vex most spell-checking software and render it unsearchable in Google. Fortunately, Aston Martin has wisely decided to adopt the same name as the Quartermaster in Ian Fleming's "James Bond" novels -- a pure coincidence, we're told. Lucky owners of these customized machines will be able to tell their friends that it was Q who added a few special touches to their cars.

Rinspeed E2 concept(2009): first pictures

Rinspeed E2 concept By Ben Pulman First Official Pictures 27 February 2009 10:05 Fancy both a Fiat 500 Abarth and an entry-level 500, but as an all-in-one package? Then infamous Swiss concept car builder Rinspeed has the car for you. Called the E2, it’s based on the 500 Abarth, but with some clever engine management technology that allows the car to run with either 158bhp or 59bhp.