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

Into the Breach: The future of in-car infotainment

In-car infotainment is broken. The best that can be said of the finest systems on the market is that they generally do what one asks of them and don't induce fits of rage. At their worst, they're actively dangerous, spiking the driver's blood pressure, forcing tentative or aggressive behavior at intersections and interchanges—and generally taking the driver outside the flow of traffic.

VW group design future

By Adam Towler Motor Industry 23 June 2008 19:01 VW Group’s Design Director Walter De Silva shed light on the future direction of Volkswagen design during a lecture earlier this week at the old Fiat Lingotto factory in Turin. Extolling his own thoughts on design amid the current world – “constraints are what promotes creativity” - he described VW as being immersed in a process of defining their design language as Audi had already done to achieve the quality and diversity necessary. Audi design DNA was “understood by everyone in the company” he said, “right down to the smallest details”.

The no-show cars: a reader rant on mad concepts

Instigated by Harley Earl at General Motors in the late 30s with the quaintly named Buick Y-Job, show cars, or concept cars, were presented to an excited public eager for new things. As the world recovered from a depression and then a war, these vehicles pointed to a better future that many people believed in, including the people who produced them. And, although many of the concept cars of the 50s, with their Jetsons plexiglass roofs and notional nuclear powered engines seem ludicrous now, in their time they weren’t that cynical.