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Art installation moves 100,000 toy cars an hour

IT'S NO PICASSO, but this installation by conceptual artist Chris Burden certainly has the potential to be moving. Called Metropolis II, this amazing construction took Chris and his chief engineer four years to design and create and expands significantly on Metropolis I - the latest version has 18 roadways including one six-lane carriageway. It also has a rail network with HO-scale model trains, and running at capacity it pumps 100,000 cars around its network at a scale speed of 230mph.

Lamborghini shifts R&D focus from more horses to fewer pounds

Lamborghini's drivetrain wizards say they have all the horsepower they need for their super-fast cars. So from here on, performance gains will come from using lighter materials to reduce vehicle weight, instead of from chasing more engine thrust. "It has come to the point where acceleration equals consumption," said Stephan Winkelmann, CEO of the Italian automaker.

Driven: Volkswagen Passat CC GT

Elegant and refined. Forty years ago these two words would not have been used to describe the Beetles bought in droves by the counterculture in the US; a symbol of the hippy movement and the definitive people's car, designed at a time when Germany sought to put people in motion. With the Passat CC, however, Volkswagen is indeed making a sharp move away from the ‘volks wagen', and these two words rolled off the tongues of those who saw the car in all three countries we drove through on our winter holiday.