Rts1077 Seal (ford) on 2040-parts.com

Beanz Meanz More Eco-Friendly Future Fords

THE car industry is full of interesting and unusual business partnerships, but this latest tie-up between Ford and Heinz promises to be one of the more intriguing. Far from seeking to produce 57 varieties of any particular new Ford model, the two firms are exploring the use of tomato fibre to develop a sustainable composite materials for use in vehicle manufacturing. For example, boffins believe that dried tomato skins could become the wiring brackets in future Ford vehicles or the storage bin a customer uses to hold coins and other small objects.

Flavio Briatore legal challenge to FIA ban

Flavio Briatore is launching legal action to get his lifetime ban overturned Flavio Briatore will start legal proceedings in the Paris Tribunal de Grande tomorrow in an attempt to overturn the lifetime ban he received from the FIA for his part in the ‘Singapore-Gate’ race fixing episode, which saw Nelson Piquet Jnr intentionally crashing his car to allow team mate Fernando Alonso to take victory in the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix. Briatore is claiming the life time ban from involvement in any FIA sanctioned Motor Sport – including driver management – is a legal absurdity. And he probably has a point.

Concept Car of the Week: AMC AMX/2 (1969)

Like Detroit's Big Three, AMC rapidly understood the importance of the youth market after the success of the Ford Mustang. In the late 60s, the design team produced a series of "Think Young" concept cars to reach the younger audience as well as exciting new showroom offerings like the Mustang-inspired Javelin, the two-seater AMX and the Rambler. Presented at the 1969 Chicago auto show, the second opus of the American Motors Experimental series, the AMX/2 was not just AMC's most daring concept car ever, but one of Detroit's first acknowledgments that the future of high-performance sports cars would be mid-engined.