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Car collector and artist makes you look twice

As with most artists, Louis Carvell simply sees the world differently than others, and his passion for cars and car collecting led him to create a thought-provoking (and clever) body of work he entitled: “Reincarnations: Car Parts ReBorn.” The photographic collages are of spare vintage-automobile parts inspired by, “the dream cars of the Eisenhower era,” Carvell said. “These pieces are art in and of itself. Initially, I photographed them [alone] against white, seamless.” Eventually, Carvell decided to expand and refine his concept and place the parts into surrealist tableaux, to give one pause to consider these objects outside their defined roles.

GM to slash global vehicle platforms by more than half, to 14, by 2018

General Motors says it will cut the number of vehicle platforms it uses globally by more than half over the next decade, in a bid to reduce complexity and save on product-development costs. “More of our components will be common, and more of our vehicles will be on global architectures,” GM CEO Dan Akerson told analysts on Tuesday. His remarks came as GM kicked off a series of presentations online, billed as its 2011 Global Business Conference.

BMW Adds Two New Exhibits to Museum

BMW added two new exhibits to its Museum in Munich, Germany this past weekend, designed to showcase the automakers forward thinking ambitions towards lightweight, efficient vehicles. Called the Simple and Clever concepts, the three wheeled urban contraptions were designed as a research exercise to make maneuvering in urban areas easier and more energy efficient. The Simple concept - an acronym of the project name 'sustainable and innovative mobility product for low energy consumption' - combines features and advantages from both automobiles and motorcycles and is powered by a 36kW combustion engine and an electric motor.