Ford Mustang 94-04 Convertible Top & Tinted Glass Window Kit Oe Haartz Sailcloth on 2040-parts.com

New Aston Martin Vanquish Volante arrives – costs £200k

The New Aston Martin Vanquish Volante (pictured) costs £200k It’s almost exactly a year since the Aston Martin Vanquish arrived as a replacement for the DBS, and now we get it’s convertible sibling – the new Aston Martin Vanquish Volante. Aston are claiming the new Vanquish Volante is the stiffest Aston convertible ever and have also managed to keep the usual weight increase for a soft top down to just 9kg by giving the Volante a full carbon fibre body. The result of that is the Volante manages to produce exactly the same performance figures as the Vanquish Coupe – 0-62mph in 4.1 seconds and 183mph – from its 565php, 6.0 litre V12 and shouldn’t, we hope, shake and shimmy in the way many Aston convertibles do in the process.

Update: Google self-driving car is really just a transportation pod

Google will launch its own fleet of autonomous vehicle prototypes – with no steering wheels and no gas or brake pedals – as the technology giant begins a new phase of its self-driving car project. Google designed the car and plans to have about 100 test vehicles that are fully autonomous with extra safety features, company co-founder Sergey Brin said during a conference Tuesday hosted by technology blog Re/code in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif. > See how Google's autonomous car navigates city streets here The New York Times reported Tuesday night that a Detroit-area manufacturer is building the cars for Google, which declined to name the manufacturer, according to the Times' story.

2012 Mazda CX-5 at Frankfurt

2012 Mazda CX-5 - Frankfurt Debut Mazda has been touting its SKYACTIV Technologies for some time now, and the new 2012 Mazda CX-5 – which Mazda will debut at Frankfurt next month – is the first Mazda to come endowed with a complete raft of SKYACTIV stuff. The clever stuff includes Mazda’s new modular platform that can be used for everything from the Mazda3 upwards, and which is said to give the CX-5 not just car-like handling but proper sporty and stable driving dynamics too. The SKYACTIV technology comes in to play with the engines too on the CX-5, with the new 2.2 litre diesel delivering 173bhp and a remarkably low 120g/km in standard guise.