2005 Mercedes Benz Clk500 Base V8 5.0l Contact Spiral on 2040-parts.com

Survey: Toyota, Honda, Ford are top brands for consumers

Toyota, Honda and Ford rank as the best brands in consumers' minds, an annual Consumer Reports survey found. Toyota finished first for the third consecutive year of the study, which involved randomly questioning more than 1,700 U.S. adults in early December.

BMW Vision ConnectedDrive (2011) first pictures

This gorgeous two-seat roadster is the BMW Vision ConnectedDrive, set to be unveiled at the 2011 Geneva motor show. Unlike some of BMW’s other Vision-tagged concept cars, this unfortunately isn’t a thinly disguised production car, but a study designed to highlight the company’s driver assistance systems.  However, although BMW has released no details on the engine or layout under the sexy skin, thankfully the Vision ConnectedDrive’s stunning styling (including the shark nose, wrap-around rear lights and layered body) will find its way onto future production BMWs.  For a start sensors in the headlamps and rear lights monitor the traffic situation and the environment around the car, while instead of wing mirrors there are antennas that receive navigation data and transmit other information. Inside the driver has a 3D head-up display, and the system can project information about the chosen sat-nav route so it appears at the exact point of a possible turn-off. The 3D system also displays information in the foreground or background of the display depending on its relevance.

Land Rover testing electric Defender 110 pickup

Land Rover has begun testing an electric version of the Land Rover Defender first shown at the 2012 Geneva motor show. The electric Defender prototype is in service at the Eden Project in Cornwall, U.K., a complex of several large transparent domes that house multiple artificially maintained environments containing thousands of rare plants, and is a popular visitor attraction. At the moment the electric Defender isn't exactly tearing through the Amazon rainforest, but the work it's doing is nevertheless a good approximation of how quite a lot of Defenders are used in real life -- at least in terms of speed and duration of use.