1963 Biscayne, Bel Air Impala on 2040-parts.com

Ford at CES 2011

Ford has been the automotive darling of the Consumer Electronics Show for several years now. On Friday morning, Ford CEO Alan Mulally made a historic third keynote speech, during which he introduced the new Focus Electric and a host of new supporting technologies, which appear to keep Ford near the top of the technological pack. Two aspects of Ford's approach are interesting.

Saab 9-2 to use MINI platform – if Saab survives

The original Saab 9-2. The new Saab 9-2 will use the current MINI platform Things are still torrid for Saab, with big lumps of downtime at Trollhattan as they struggle to get suppliers to deliver parts when those same suppliers are already owed big chunks of money. The trouble is, not producing cars for much longer is going to leave Saab in between the same rock and a hard place as when GM were procrastinating about who to offload Saab to.

Merc to revive straight six, plus 4cyl and smaller V8s

Mercedes has just signed off a new engine family which will see most full-sized Mercs in future run four-cylinders, downsized V8s and… straight sixes. A friendly Mercedes engineer recently met CAR to disclose the engine plans for future models, including the surprise disclosure that Merc plans to switch to straight sixes, like its rivals over in Munich.  It's fair to say I almost choked on my breakfast croissant when I found out the details of the next MB engine generation which has just been signed off for release in 2015. Mercedes' future four-cylinder engines Again, there will be a family of new low-cost fours, and the big-bore V8s will be replaced by a series of downsized turbocharged 4.0-litre units.