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Concept Car of the Week: Buick Y-Job (1938)

Welcome to the first in a new, regular, series of features in which we highlight an important, forgotten or just plain cool concept car each week. Concept cars have thrilled and inspired for decades, testing the limits in terms of technology and design and shaping the ways cars are designed today. They're the pinnacle of our art and probably the thing that first piqued your interest in car design.

'Talking cars' in US safety drive

NEW CARS and light trucks may be fitted with technology that lets vehicles communicate with each other in a bid to avoid deadly crashes. A radio beacon would continually transmit a vehicle's position, heading, speed and other information. Cars would receive the same information back from other vehicles, and a vehicle's computer would alert the driver to an impending collision.

Porsche and Mercedes-Benz proposals for China Family Car Project explored

Today's Chinese car industry is barely recognizable from that of 20 years ago, and the country is now the biggest market in the world. But in 1994, when the industry was still in its relative infancy, the Chinese government launched the 'China Family Car Project', inviting 20 major Western carmakers to develop proposals for a five-seat, cheap and environmentally-friendly family car for the Chinese market. The chosen proposal would be made in China under a joint venture with First Auto Works (FAW).