1955-1957 Rear Motor Mounts Standard Shift & Front Mount Gromets on 2040-parts.com

CES: GM to open the dashboard to developers

At last year's Autoweek Design Forum, father of the iPod and Nest Labs co-founder Tony Fadell suggested that automakers concentrate on designing and building cars, leaving handset makers to handle infotainment. The latest announcements from Ford and GM -- in conjunction with the International CES -- suggest that automakers would rather treat the dashboard space as a handset. Yesterday, Dearborn, Mich., announced the Ford Developer Program, which opens up Sync to outside application development; now General Motors has announced a similar initiative.

Toyota leaves F1

Toyota are quitting F1 It’s not exactly a huge surprise, but Toyota has announced today that they are leaving Formula One and will not be back in 2010 to take their place. With the announcement that Bridgestone are also quitting F1 after 2010, and the departure of Honda before the 2009 season started, there is going to be no Japanese involvement in F1. Which is rather sad for a nation that loves its cars.

New Audi e-Tron at Detroit – the ‘Compact’ e-Tron

Audi has revealed a compact version of the e-Tron at the Detroit Motor Show Audi brought along the first Audi e-Tron to the Frankfurt Motor Show in September. Looking like an electric version of the Audi R8, it managed to steal some of the thunder from BMW’s Vision ED concept . Most notable was the stratospheric torque figures Audi quoted, which ultimately turned out to be somewhat disingenuous.