Hot seats: from design to delivery [sponsored]

As the user demands on car interiors are increasingly influenced by their growing design consciousness, so suppliers like Lear strive to bring better-engineered seating to satisfy. 2013 was another big year for Lear, as Jeanette Puig-Pey, its global fabric & leather design manager, enthuses: "At our ‘Design2Perform' event we celebrated the unveiling of our brand new collection, with special emphasis on color and texture and our TeXstyle Enhance product, perfect for customization. Laser etching is part of this offering, it is exclusive to Lear Corporation and can be used to add refined design elements to cloth and leather." A mix of fabric and leather in seating is not new but is often seen by the consumer as a cheaper alternative to full leather.

Jeep hides ad in 'Saturday Night Live' skit, sort of

Jeep did something over the weekend that we've never seen before -- probably because we're too young. It didn't place its product in a show, which has become more and more common. “We can take my Prius, it has navigation!” And it didn't quite make a commercial spot, in the traditional sense, at least.

Suzuki Regina, Q-concept, Swift EV (2011) first pictures

Suzuki is showing its vision for an aerodynamic city car at the 2011 Tokyo auto show: the regally named Regina. It's pitched as a radical 'next-generation global compact car', which sounds suspiciously as if it could have production intent. The new Suzuki Regina is all about minimalism: it weighs just 730kg, so it only requires a small capacity petrol engine, which brings emissions down to 70g/km and appetite for unleaded at a rate of 90mpg.