1930 Buick Left Side Cowl Light Rat Rod 4 1/4" Rat Rod on 2040-parts.com

Who's Where: Peter Schreyer appointed President of Kia Motors

Peter Schreyer has been been appointed President of Kia Motors after holding the position of Chief Design Officer since 2006. Schreyer is the first non-Korean to hold the position within the company and one of the highest-ranking designers in the history of the industry. Schreyer, who is now 59, moved from the VW Group to transform the historically 'dull-but-worthy' Kia product range into one of the strongest and most design-led in the industry through stand-out production cars such as the Picanto and Sportage as well as a diverse range of concepts from Pop to GT.

News watch Feb 2010: today's auto industry news

Tuesday 2 February 2010• Spyker has outlined its plans for Saab, which include a new 'all Saab' 9-3 to be launched in 2012. Read the full story here (Saab)• EuroNCAP has named the VW Golf as 'Safest Car of 2009' after ranking all the 33 models it crashed last year (Volkswagen) • Toyota's massive recall to fix fault accelerator pedals could cost the company £1.25bn in lost output and sales (BBC)• Ford will unveil an Edge SUV at next week's Chicago auto show with a turbocharged four-cylinder Ecoboost engine, but the extensive visual mid-life facelift has been made economically possible thanks to Ford's worldwide consolidation of its model ranges (Detroit News) • Toyota has denied that it ignored warnings and acted slowly over reports of unintended acceleration in its vehicles (Detroit News) Monday 1 February 2010• Lotus's vehicle engineering director Roger Becker announced his retirement today. Becker, 64, joined Lotus in 1966, worked alongside Colin Chapman and helped develop every single model since (Group Lotus)• Tata Motors' total sales last month hit 65,478 vehicles – a rise of 77% over January 2009.

Aston Martin, AMG ink technical partnership deal

It's hard to remember that the VH-platform Aston Martins were pretty mind-bending when they came out. Since the sports-luxury marque was cut loose from Ford's stewardship six years ago, the British manufacturer has seemed a bit adrift, largely playing with variations on a theme, save for the rather radical One-77. It is, of course, a very pretty theme, but the basic design language begun with the DB9 is now a decade old.