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

CAR interviews Dany Bahar on the crisis at Lotus (2012)

CAR yesterday sat down with Dany Bahar, the chief executive officer of Lotus Cars, to discuss the company's financial situation. He talked about the recent takeover of parent company Proton by DRB-Hicom and what it means for Lotus, the financial performance of Hethel and the latest on plans to launch the new Esprit supercar and all the other new Lotuses in the pipeline. Read on for CAR Magazine's full interview with Dany Bahar, split over the next three pages.

Mini Vision concept: what does it say about the brand's future?

The sight of Mini design head Anders Warming presenting a holographic, 3D projection of the Mini Vision concept as if appearing in his own cartoon was certainly a new one on us, but it captured the quirky, slightly left-field image the subsidiary of BMW Group has cultivated since its relaunch 13 years ago. As the 'Vision' tag suggests, this is billed as a marker of intent for the brand's future design direction rather than a pre-production teaser of the new Mini hatchback (Cooper in most markets) we'll see later this year. However if the third-generation 'new' Mini doesn't look remarkably similar we'd be amazed, such is the level of productionized detailing on this purely digital model.

Toyota FT-Bh concept (2012) the first teaser sketch

This is the Toyota FT-Bh show car. Or rather, it’s a sketch of the Toyota FT-Bh, and our first glimpse of a new affordable city car concept that will be unveiled for the first time at the 2012 Geneva motor show in March. Ah, the tried-and-tested PR tease.