Sierra 2779 Exhaust Hose on 2040-parts.com

Third annual World Automotive Design Competition

The third annual World Automotive Design Competition, sponsored by Alias, was hosted by the Canadian International Auto Show in Toronto, Ontario, on February 12. Britain's Coventry School of Art and Design, and Tsinghua University in Beijing, China were the big winners, together garnering seven of the eight prizes. Ninety-four students from twenty design schools from China, Brazil, Japan, France, Korea, England, Wales, Italy, Spain, India, Sweden, the USA and Canada competed to win over US$140,000 in prizes.

The €2000 car

By Tim Pollard Motor Industry 15 June 2007 08:28 The market for bargain basement cars costing as little as €2000 (£1400) is about to grow dramatically. CAR Online is reporting from Bosch’s annual technology seminar all week – and we grilled the bosses at the world’s biggest components supplier to find out about the soaring demand for cars priced under €7000 (£4900). Bosch’s president of gasoline systems, Wolf-Henning Scheider, said: ‘According to our estimates, this vehicle class will reach a share of 13 percent of the world market in 2010.

Honda cutting production in Swindon again – 500 jobs at risk

Honda is cutting another 500 jobs in Swindon It’s only a year since Honda announced 800 job cuts at Swindon (which eventually was 550) and now they’re about to cut a further 500 as weak demand – particularly in Europe – sees the Swindon plant producing just half the cars it could. The plan is to cut shifts from 3 to 2 a day, which will result in the loss of 340 permanent jobs and 160 temporary ones, and production will be centred on just one production line to increase efficiency and flexibility. The Swindon Plant – which builds the Civic, Civic Tourer, CR-V and Jazz (and the Civic Type-R from next year) – has been hard hit by the slump in European sales in the last five years and, despite still strong UK sales, production levels of 120,000 cars a year – just half of the Swindon capacity – are not enough to sustain the current staffing levels.