Auto Meter Ultra-lite Mechanical Water Temperature Gauge 2 5/8" Exc on 2040-parts.com

One Lap of the Web: Aston Martin Works, 'Gran Turismo' movie and the Mercedes-Benz S-class build process

We spend a lot of time on the Internet -- pretty much whenever we're not driving, writing about or working on cars. Since there's more out there than we'd ever be able to cover, here's our daily digest of car stuff on the Web you may not otherwise have heard about. -- Along with the “Need for Speed” franchise, the “Gran Turismo” series may be the latest in line to make the leap to the big screen.

New Lotus Elite: Top-Down +video

New Lotus Elite (2014) Top Down I think we’ve just about got over the surprise of a New Lotus Elite dropping from a clear blue sky in the week before the Paris Motor Show. What we still haven’t completely got our heads around is the plethora of models subsequently revealed at the show itself. Yes, we were expecting the new Lotus Esprit – even if we reckoned we might have got that wrong after the New Elite showed up – but we hadn’t reckoned on the new Elan, the new Eterne and the new Elise as well (never mind a City Car concept).

Daimler and Renault-Nissan strike a global partnership

Daimler today struck a wide-ranging partnership with the Renault-Nissan alliance, in a deal that will usher in new jointly developed cars, shared technologies and a multitude of cost savings.  Cars such as the new 2014 Smart Fortwo will now be twinned with the next Renault Twingo, while the Forfour is set for a comeback and we can expect plenty of shared combustion engines and electric motors, borrowed platforms and jointly developed SUV tech across all three parties. And that's only scratching the surface of the possibilities opened up by this wide-ranging deal.