Ford Fiesta is Used Car of the Year

CAP, the used car information experts, have declared the Ford Fiesta as their used car of the year 2012. Do you want a shopping car or a maybe car for use just in the urban jungle? Do you want a car to use every day to commute or do you want a plaything for the weekend?

Who's Where: Ken Okuyama parts company with Pininfarina

Pininfarina, the Turin, Italy-based automotive styling house, has announced that its design director, Ken Okuyama, has left the company. In a tersely-worded statement Pininfarina said, "The Company's decision comes as a result of the various external activities Ken Okuyama was carrying out beyond his responsibilities within Pininfarina." Ken Okuyama had been Design Director at Pininfarina since July 2005. During this time, Okuyama's most high-profile work was the Maserati Birdcage prototype, created to celebrate 75th anniversary of the Italian styling house.

MIT develops self-transforming materials that behave 'like robots without robots'

A cross-disciplinary research lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has developed a suite of programmable materials, including carbon fiber, printed wood grain, textile composites, rubbers and plastics, that self-transform when exposed to an external stimulus. Director of the Self-Assembly Lab, Skylar Tibbits, presented a TED talk on 4D printing in 2013, where he demonstrated how a flat sheet of material could effectively build itself when exposed to water, like a robot without a robot. Following positive feedback from industries including aviation, automotive and manufacturing, his lab has been working on developing materials that change according to different activation sources, including heat, light, and air pressure, in addition to water – all of which have automotive relevance.