Armor Design Hardcase/softback Motorcycle Backpack Color-shade Green on 2040-parts.com

MG Design Centre opens in UK

The opening of MG's new design center this week at the historic production site of Longbridge, Birmingham, England was both an incredible and credible occasion. Incredible, because the brand looked dead in the water after the debacle of MG Rover's collapse in 2005 and even after various Chinese takeovers, its UK operation seemed destined to play no more than a tokenistic bit part. And thankfully credible too, because now all of MG's global design will genuinely be led from this new facility in the epicentre of England's traditional motoring heartland.

Maybach Zeppelin comes over the horizon

The Maybach Zeppelin - an even bigger waste of money than the standard Maybach Maybach has not exactly been an unmitigated success for Mercedes. Conceived as a competitor for Rolls Royce, it does seem to have carved itself a niche, but probably not the one that Mercedes wanted. Perceived by most as a tarted-up S Class, and bought by the wealthy of the Playstation generation, rather than the Captains of Industry that Mercedes envisioned, the Maybach must be a loss-maker for Mercedes.

2011 Mazda2 Facelift revealed

The Mazda2 gets tweaked for 2011 Well, it’s sort of the 2011 facelift for the Mazda2, but that rather depends on what direction you come at this from. If you look at the UK and Euro offerings for the last year this is definitely a new nose and interior tweaks for the Mazda 2, but if you read our report in October 2009 about Mazda 2s coming off the production line in Thailand you’ll see that our ‘New, Facelift Mazda 2′ looks exactly the same as the Mazda 2 Facelift the Thai car got almost two years ago. But we have to be sensible and look at this from a domestic point of view – even if we do find it off that Mazda has taken two years to give the UK and Europe the updates coming out of Thailand two years ago.