Spada, The long story of a long tail is Waft's latest book

Spada, The long story of a short tail is the new book from Waft publishing. As the title suggests, this latest project from the creators of Masters of Modern Car Design charts the remarkably prolific career of Italian car designer Ercole Spada. From the legendary Zagato-era Aston Martin DB4 and Alfa Romeo TZ1 that established his trademark cropped tail, to the 2008 Codatronca supercar that bore his name, via the 1980s BMW 5 and 7 Series, this 304-page hardback covers them all in fine detail.

Volvo V40 range gets new Drive-E engines

From May this year Volvo will update its V40 model, equipping the premium Swedish hatchback with its range of high-efficiency Drive-E engines and Volvo’s latest eight-speed automatic gearbox. This means the revised V40 line-up now offers an impressive performance to efficiency ratio, with 190hp on offer in the D4 turbodiesel variant, returning a claimed 74.3mpg combined with 99g/km CO2 when mated to the six-speed manual. On Bing: see pictures of the Volvo V40 Find out how much a used Volvo V40 costs on Auto Trader This makes it even more efficient than the current, less powerful 177hp, 185g/km D4 turbodiesel.

2008 Fiat’s best year EVER!

Didn’t they do well!? Fiat has just announced that, despite the doom and gloom in the car world in 2008, particularly in the last quarter, they have had their best year ever, with their trading profit up by 4% and turnover by 1.5% to €60 billion. Well done them.