01-03 Ford Ranger Edge/xlt 4wd Open Across Aluminum Billet Grille on 2040-parts.com

New British car company aims for bespoke market

A NEW BRITISH car company has been launched and the Alcraft Motor Company aims to offer bespoke designs based on existing models. The company says it will offer enhanced designs for Aston Martin, Jaguar and Land Rover models to begin with. Each design will be unique to the customer in a move that harks back to the days of coachbuilt cars of the 1920s.

Volvo C30: now starts under £15k

Volvo C30 ES 2.0 - now starts at £14,995 It’s been all change at Volvo in the last year, with the Swedish car maker going from being the last vestige of Ford’s ill-fated Premier Auto Group to the first high-profile car maker to fall to the Chinese resurgence as an economic force. Volvo also has a new boss in former VW man Stefan Jacoby, who has made it clear he doesn’t see Volvo as a ‘Premier’ marque. Not that he’s downplaying what Volvo has to offer, he’d just prefer us to think of Volvo as unique and Swedish rather than in competition with the likes of Mercedes and BMW.

Official: Aston Martin gets its hands on Mercedes AMG engines & Electronic Architecture

Aston Martin & AMG confirm they’re getting in bed together Back in December we reported that Aston Martin had new investment from Investindustrial and wondered if that would mean – thanks to an existing relationship between Investindustrial and AMG – if we’d see Aston Martin finally getting access to AMG’s engines and platforms. By May, things had moved on and it was clear that Aston Martin and AMG were in talks for Aston Martin to get access to their engines for the next generation of AML’s cars. Now those talks have borne fruit and AMG and AML have signed a letter of intent for Aston Martin to “access significant Mercedes-AMG GmbH and Mercedes-Benz Cars’ resources, allowing the development of bespoke V8 powertrains and the use of certain components of electric/electronic (e/e) architecture.” Interestingly, there’s no talk of V12 engines – which could mean Aston Martin are going to move from the current Ford V12 for the DB9 and Vanquish to a powerful V8 from AMG – and nor is there talk of sharing platforms.