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Old is new again: Will a floor-hinged throttle pedal be in your future?

If you think that every little nut, bolt, switch, gear or widget in your new car wasn't scrutinized by a team of highly educated, overworked car geeks (read: engineers), think again. A couple of recent conversations with automotive engineers confirmed that virtually nothing that goes into a car today is taken for granted. During the recent Pebble Beach weekend, I had the pleasure of spending time with an engineer for Jaguar, and the subject turned to materials used for various switches in the cabin.

Spyker D8 SUV back in 2014 – but when did it become mid-engined?!

Apparently, the Spyker D8 SUV (pictured) will somehow be mid-engined It’s no surprise that Spyker are heading to the 2014 Geneva Motor Show with a ‘new’ version of their ‘Super SUV’ D8 Peking-Paris. That’s because Victor Muller managed to get Youngman to invest €25 million in the D8 project last year (it’s Victor’s speciality) with the plan being to finally take the Spyker SUV closer to a market launch in time to take on the new ‘Super SUVs’ from the likes of Bentley and Lamborghini. But what is a surprise is what Autocar claim Victor said to them about the D8.

BMW i3 EV revealed. It’s clever, but it’s not exactly pretty

The BMW i3 electric city car (pictured) has been officially revealed The BMW i3 – the first of BMW’s production ‘i’ electric cars – has finally been revealed at events in London, New York and Beijing as BMW plots its course to bring a premium electric city car to the world. Looking much like the original Mega City Concept, the i3 debuts a number of innovations from BMW – which are very clever – but it also debuts perhaps the worst looking BMW we’ve ever seen, with its incongruous lines, bulging bonnet, odd shapes on the flanks and slab-backed rear view. But what underpins the i3 is clever indeed, with a lightweight inner body made from carbon fibre and carbon fibre reinforced body panels providing the skin, all conspiring to make the i3 light – 1195kg, despite 25 per cent or so of that being batteries – and very rigid.