Vintage Gm Pontiac - Firebird Arrow Emblem Badge Part# 9861625 on 2040-parts.com

Mini Vision concept: what does it say about the brand's future?

The sight of Mini design head Anders Warming presenting a holographic, 3D projection of the Mini Vision concept as if appearing in his own cartoon was certainly a new one on us, but it captured the quirky, slightly left-field image the subsidiary of BMW Group has cultivated since its relaunch 13 years ago. As the 'Vision' tag suggests, this is billed as a marker of intent for the brand's future design direction rather than a pre-production teaser of the new Mini hatchback (Cooper in most markets) we'll see later this year. However if the third-generation 'new' Mini doesn't look remarkably similar we'd be amazed, such is the level of productionized detailing on this purely digital model.

Women are now the driving force in cars

WOMEN now account for more than half of all driving licence holders in the USA and the UK is set to follow this example by 2016. Younger women drivers are helping to boost the number of female driving licence holders around the world, but older women drivers are also growing in number. The number of males applying for a new driving licence has declined in the last three years, but the number of women applying for a driving licence has gone up by 2.5%.

Tesla Roadster vs Top Gear

As I’m sure many of you will have seen at the weekend, Clarkson got to play with the Tesla Roadster, an electric sports car based on the Lotus Elise. Made for interesting viewing. It was obvious that the weight of the batteries would compromise the handling, but its actual straight-line speed was a real revelation.