2010 Volkswagen Jetta Passenger Door Mirror Oem Lkq on 2040-parts.com

The Rolls Royce Phantom gets a tweak

Ever since BMW bought Rolls Royce, the company has been on the up. First we got the Phantom, which showed the world just how special a Rolls Royce of the 21st century could be. The Phantom spawned the Drophead Coupe and more recently the Phantom Coupe.

MIT develops self-transforming materials that behave 'like robots without robots'

A cross-disciplinary research lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has developed a suite of programmable materials, including carbon fiber, printed wood grain, textile composites, rubbers and plastics, that self-transform when exposed to an external stimulus. Director of the Self-Assembly Lab, Skylar Tibbits, presented a TED talk on 4D printing in 2013, where he demonstrated how a flat sheet of material could effectively build itself when exposed to water, like a robot without a robot. Following positive feedback from industries including aviation, automotive and manufacturing, his lab has been working on developing materials that change according to different activation sources, including heat, light, and air pressure, in addition to water – all of which have automotive relevance.

Ford’s 1.0 litre EcoBoost engine now going in to 1 in 5 new Fords

Half the Ford B-Max (pictured) sold get the 1.0 litre EcoBoost engine Who’d have thought, just a few years ago, that a 1.0 litre, 3-cylinder engine would become one of the most popular engines in a new car in Europe? But that’s exactly what’s happened with the increasingly impressive 1.0 litre EcoBoost from Ford which, as its power output has increased, has become a more and more popular engine of choice. The little Ford EcoBoost even seems to have persuaded buyers that they should forsake dirty diesel engines for it, and Ford has fitted 120,000 in the first six months of 2014 with almost half B-Max models, a third of Focus and 30 per cent of Fiestas getting the little wonder.