Gm Chevy Corvette Original Bolts on 2040-parts.com

Tomorrow's world: lightweight carbon composites

Once all the dust settles on The Great Battery Farce (the idea that the world's ills will be taken care of by sticking a battery in everything that moves and charging it up) we may eventually face up to the fact that the best way to move something around more economically, is to move less of it. That means making things lighter, a lot lighter. Car makers are working on it and manufacturers like Audi and Jaguar have already become masters in bringing aluminium to the mass production.

Audi A7 breaks cover

This is Audi's new A7--the sleek, upmarket liftback previewed by the Sportback concept at the 2009 Detroit auto show. The A7 aims to provide the company with a stylish but practical rival to contemporary four-door luxury cars such as the Jaguar XF and the second-generation Mercedes-Benz CLS. Revealed at a gala presentation in Munich on Monday, the A7 is the second liftback model launched by Audi recently, following the smaller A5.

Design Services: Car Menu launched

Within almost every automotive design department throughout the world, their comes a time when a junior designer is dispatched to find a picture of some new model's tail lamp, the side view of a particular class leading competitor or examples of several new cars' colour and trim packages. Whilst looking at the competition is not necessarily a healthy way of finding ideas, it is often essential to demonstrate what is feasible, check in-house proposals are not too derivative, or show how advanced a design theme is relative to the same type of cars on the market. But even if the particular aspect of a car can be found, press packs and magazines typically show cars in the flattering light of an exotic location or being drifted around a corner on opposite lock; rarely are these images particularly useful.