Vintage Shovel Head Backrest on 2040-parts.com

Smart For-Us concept unveiled at 2012 Detroit show

Smart made a splash with its world debut at the 2012 Detroit auto show: its For-Us concept car provides a vision of the Smart as an American icon, a pick-up. The diminutive truck - just 3547mm long - is longer than a Fortwo, and is supposed to be based on the running gear of the next-gen Smart Forfour, aka the new Renault Twingo. So if the For-Us doesn't look so much like a Smart any more, from the front at least, that's why.

Jaguar XJ_e PHEV Plug-in Hybrid wins RAC Awards

The Jaguar XJ_e PHEV plug-in hybrid has won the RAC ‘Most Energy Efficient Luxury Car Prototype’ and ‘Technical Panel’s Award of Merit’. This year, Jaguar rolled out its experimental hybrid XJ – the Jaguar XJ_e, which we saw at this year’s Goodwood Festival of Speed – which managed to win the award for ‘Most Energy Efficient Luxury Car Prototype’ and also grabbed the Technical Panel’s ‘Award of Merit’ for its clever tech and frugal transit. Jaguar entered three XJ_e PHEV experimental cars in to the FCC, which managed to do the Brighton to London run on just 1.2 litres of petrol and 11kWh of electricity which adds up to an mpg of around 125mpg.

Fiat gets naughty, supposedly, with the 500 Cattiva special editions

Monterey car week is the perfect time for automakers to launch new concepts and debut special edition vehicles. But it's usually the big names in the luxury/performance world -- the heavy hitters, if you will -- that show up and show off. Cadillac unveiled the Ciel concept a few years back, BMW featured a Zagato roadster in 2012 and the Porsche 918 concept used Pebble as a stage for its first North American appearance.