Harley Davidson Zepplin Air Ride Seat on 2040-parts.com

Where is Nissan and Infiniti design headed? Just look at the lamps

For a glimpse at future styling trends from Nissan Motor Co., look to the headlamps on the Nissan Leaf electric car and the sculpted rear of the Infiniti M. Front and rear lamps raised from the body surface and pronounced spoilers are two tricks Nissan will use more often to improve the aerodynamics and handling of vehicles--in addition to giving them a futuristic flair, global design chief Shiro Nakamura says. The goal: Win young drivers and bring sales of models such as the Nissan Altima in line with Japanese rivals "The important thing is the front end and the rear end," Nakamura said during an April 12 interview at the company's main design studio south of Tokyo.

Show Review: 100% Design Tokyo

Tokyo held its design week late last year, overlapping with the tail-end of the auto show. Though thankfully easier to get to than that, what you get is a bit different to expectations. Japanese are noted for the effort they give presentation: it's in their dress, their language, in how they wrap gifts in stores and serve food in restaurants.

New Vauxhall Astra Sports Tourer (2011) Revealed

The Vauxhall Astra ST 2011 You can’t have a new Vauxhall Astra without a new Astra Estate, so Vauxhall has now got round to revealing the Vauxhall Astra Sports Tourer, which will go on sale at the end of the year and be built at Vauxhall’s plant in Ellesmere Port. Vauxhall has done a good job of making a load-lugger from the stylish Astra. The wheelbase remains the same but the load length grows by 28mm, not a huge amount but enough to give the Astra ST 500 litres of load space with the seats up and 1550 litres with them down.