Red 18" Motorcycle Car Wheel Rim Reflective Metallic Stripe Tape Decal Sticker Z on 2040-parts.com

The no-show cars: a reader rant on mad concepts

Instigated by Harley Earl at General Motors in the late 30s with the quaintly named Buick Y-Job, show cars, or concept cars, were presented to an excited public eager for new things. As the world recovered from a depression and then a war, these vehicles pointed to a better future that many people believed in, including the people who produced them. And, although many of the concept cars of the 50s, with their Jetsons plexiglass roofs and notional nuclear powered engines seem ludicrous now, in their time they weren’t that cynical.

Toyota Auris Touring Sports: Paris 2012

Toyota has revealed the first estate version of the Auris – the 2013 Toyota Auris Touring Sports – at the Paris Motor Show. It’s a sensible move by Toyota to add an estate version to a car that competes in a segment where 25 per cent of all cars sold are estates, and the Auris Estate looks a decent offering. The Auris Touring Sports sits on the same 2600mm wheelbase as the Auris hatch, but it gets and extra 285mm longer thanks to the new shed on the back, a shed that offers what looks like a decent carrying capacity )although Toyota aren’t actually telling us how much ‘stuff’ the Auris estate can carry).

The last Volvo XC90 rolls off the production line to make way for the all new 2015 XC90

The last Volvo XC90 rolls off the production line in Sweden. When the current Volvo XC90 arrived in 2002 it staked a claim as the perfect family SUV, a role it’s managed to hang on to – more or less – even though the XC90 is now long past its sell-by date. That’s because the 2002 XC90 was so cleverly conceived in the first place, with family-friendly ease of access to the back row of seats, inflatable side curtains for all three rows of seats, an integrated adjustable booster cushion for children, safety belt tensioners for all seats, easy to drive, decent looking and almost classless.