Toyota Rav4 Oxygen Sensor on 2040-parts.com

Coventry University Degree Show 2010

Car Design News traveled to Coventry University's BA graduate exhibition last month, the largest and most established of its kind in the UK. Held in the University's School of Art and Design, the sheer number of graduates guaranteed a broad spread of projects. However, the recurring theme this year was of reinterpreting luxury in a more sustainable and socially conscious manner.

News watch Feb 2010: today's auto industry news

Tuesday 2 February 2010• Spyker has outlined its plans for Saab, which include a new 'all Saab' 9-3 to be launched in 2012. Read the full story here (Saab)• EuroNCAP has named the VW Golf as 'Safest Car of 2009' after ranking all the 33 models it crashed last year (Volkswagen) • Toyota's massive recall to fix fault accelerator pedals could cost the company £1.25bn in lost output and sales (BBC)• Ford will unveil an Edge SUV at next week's Chicago auto show with a turbocharged four-cylinder Ecoboost engine, but the extensive visual mid-life facelift has been made economically possible thanks to Ford's worldwide consolidation of its model ranges (Detroit News) • Toyota has denied that it ignored warnings and acted slowly over reports of unintended acceleration in its vehicles (Detroit News) Monday 1 February 2010• Lotus's vehicle engineering director Roger Becker announced his retirement today. Becker, 64, joined Lotus in 1966, worked alongside Colin Chapman and helped develop every single model since (Group Lotus)• Tata Motors' total sales last month hit 65,478 vehicles – a rise of 77% over January 2009.

UK Car Insurance Company reports buyers downsizing

Swinton Insurance claim quote requests for bigger cars are down 20% Swinton say that it has seen an increase of 25% in quote requests for smaller engined cars in the last six months and a decrease of 20% in car insurance quotes for cars over 1.8 litres (which, short of the big-engined cars being scrapped begs the question: What’s happened to the big-engined cars? Did they just disappear, or are they just not being insured?). But this got us thinking.