CPP to buy Browns Lane

CPP are off to Browns Lane - where every E-Type Jaguar was built As regular readers will know, we’re big fans of CPP and are always happy to big them up at the drop of a hat, even before they acquired Vladimir Antonov’s money and set forth on a mission to buy up the world’s niche car makers. So with solid funding from ‘Vlad the Investor’, CPP are on a fast road to being a sizeable force in world car manufacture; not in the volume sense, but certainly in the impact their products are making. Despite pointing out to us that they haven’t actually bought Zagato (technically correct) Zagato is now very much part of the CPP portfolio, as is extreme off-roader Bowler – a more recent acquisition – both solid names to exploit in a high-end car maker future Nirvana.

SAIC Leaf concept

The Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation (SAIC) will unveil this futuristic concept at next week's Beijing motor show. Called the Leaf, the new concept has no relation to Nissan's concept car shown in Tokyo last year. It is a much more fanciful two-seat concept car whose design is entirely open to the elements, and it also features a slew of environmentally-friendly technologies.

Ford to make three-cylinder EcoBoost engine, eight-speed transmission

UPDATED: Ford is taking a look at the powertrain of its future, and in a nutshell, it's going to be small--at least under the hood. That's because the Blue Oval is preparing a 1.0-liter, three-cylinder EcoBoost engine, claimed to be the smallest engine the company has ever built. Ford says this baby EcoBoost will offer output comparable to a normally aspirated 1.6-liter, four-cylinder powerplant.