Alpine Cda-9856 on 2040-parts.com

£50,000 crystal-studded tin marks T-Cut milestone

AS TINS of polish go, this one is rather special. This is T-Cut’s 60th birthday present to itself and comes encrusted with tens of thousands of pounds worth of Swarovski crystals. T-Cut says 26,000 individual jewels make up the design, which took 75 hours of work for Shirley Sinclair of specialist designer Crystallized by Request to complete.

Lotus Exige S Roadster arriving Summer 2013 (video)

So the revelation that the Lotus Exige S Roadster – which had an outing as a concept at the 2012 Geneva Motor Show – is finally making it in to production and will arrive in the Summer of 2013 is exactly the sort of Lotus news we want to hear. Lotus has revealed the Exige S Roadster as a reality in a short tease video (below) telling us the new Lotus will be ‘Ready for the Summer’, although by the time it gets in to the hands of customers summer will probably be already over (if it’s not already – we have had a few nice days in a row). The Exige S Roadster will get the same 345bhp 3.5 litre V6 complete with supercharger as the coupe which will be enough to get you to 62mph in just 4 seconds, and you’ll be able to row it along with either a six-speed manual or automated manual ’box plus, thanks to a very lightweight folding roof and the loss of the back spoiler, the Roadster will weigh no more than the coupe so should handle exactly how a Lotus is meant to.

Hyundai i40 Estate: Production-ready i40 debuts in Geneva

Hyundai i40 Estate debuts in production-ready guise at Geneva The Hyundai i40 has been cropping up all over the world in the last year as a very credible contender in the D-Segment. And now – better late than never – Europe gets its own Hyundai i40. The i40 on show at Geneva this week is the one designed for Europe at Hyundai’s European Design Studios in Germany.