Auto Meter Autogage 5" Tachometer With Shift Light 10k Rpm Monster Tach Black on 2040-parts.com

10 great and safe rides for teens

Thinking about what's the best car for your teen when he or she faces the real word of driving? Here are some suggestions: Dodge Caliber BASE PRICE: $17,090 With five-star front- and side-crash ratings from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and a hatchback body, the Caliber is among the safest and most flexible small cars on the market. Ford Focus Ford Focus BASE PRICE: $16,690 The car is long in the tooth, but Ford's continuous refinement of the Focus yields a reliable and still fun-to-drive car with respectable crash-safety results.

An Audience with Syd Mead at CCS

"Visual futurist and concept artist." Like some sort of Transformer, those words combine to create an ideal job description for many an industrial designer. With the world of design becoming more varied, and our jobs becoming more demanding of diversity, it's no surprise that many of us venture into adjacent professions. Industrial Design has adapted especially well recently to Hollywood, bringing our experience to recent films like Avatar and Prometheus, but the trend actually goes back several decades.

Concept Car of the Week: Oldsmobile Aerotech (1987)

In late 1984, Oldsmobile management had so much confidence in the potential of its new inline four-cylinder engine Quad 4, that a small team was assigned to the creation of the Aerotech, a research vehicle designed to demonstrate the engine's performance by setting a new world speed record. Ed Welburn, then assistant chief designer, was mostly working on the 1988 Cutlass Supreme but his passion for race cars made him the ideal candidate to be handed the assignment by Oldsmobile 2 studio's chief David North. Inspired by Le Mans racers such as the Porsche 917LH and Jim Hall's Chaparrals, he designed a long, flowing car that immediately seduced design director Chuck Jordan and GM management.