Arias Pistons 12.5:1 Compression 82mm Bore Honda B-series on 2040-parts.com

Hot seats: from design to delivery [sponsored]

As the user demands on car interiors are increasingly influenced by their growing design consciousness, so suppliers like Lear strive to bring better-engineered seating to satisfy. 2013 was another big year for Lear, as Jeanette Puig-Pey, its global fabric & leather design manager, enthuses: "At our ‘Design2Perform' event we celebrated the unveiling of our brand new collection, with special emphasis on color and texture and our TeXstyle Enhance product, perfect for customization. Laser etching is part of this offering, it is exclusive to Lear Corporation and can be used to add refined design elements to cloth and leather." A mix of fabric and leather in seating is not new but is often seen by the consumer as a cheaper alternative to full leather.

Report: 10th annual RTT Conference

Held at the Old Congress Hall in Munich, the 10th annual RTT Conference was a showcase for Realtime Technologies AG's (RTT) visualization products. Entitled 'Sharing Visions', the event was a platform for the established supplier of virtual prototyping and virtual marketing tools to demonstrate the services it supplies to various industries, principal among which is the automotive design industry. While many of the presentations revolved around the integration of RTT's software to streamline the processes related to marketing and product development, some reflected on the software's ability to facilitate creation and gauge public perception.

Twizy Renault Sport F1 concept is a completely bonkers EV

Based on the  strange little Renault Twizy EV commuter golf buggy, the Twizy Renaultsport F1 concept gets a mad body kit to make it look like something out of a Star Wars film, with huge wings, side pods, a rear diffuser and a yellow paint job that evokes Renault’s sporting heritage. But it’s under the skin where the interesting stuff lurks. Renault has fitted the Twizy with an F1 inspired KERS system that fits where the back seat used to be (yes, the F1 Twizy is a toy just for one) which chucks an extra 79bhp at the Twizy’s existing electric motor when fully charged, enough to scoot the F1 Twizy to 62mph in just 6 seconds.