Visteon Alternators/starters 7798 Alternator/generator-reman Alternator on 2040-parts.com

BMW i3 EV revealed. It’s clever, but it’s not exactly pretty

The BMW i3 electric city car (pictured) has been officially revealed The BMW i3 – the first of BMW’s production ‘i’ electric cars – has finally been revealed at events in London, New York and Beijing as BMW plots its course to bring a premium electric city car to the world. Looking much like the original Mega City Concept, the i3 debuts a number of innovations from BMW – which are very clever – but it also debuts perhaps the worst looking BMW we’ve ever seen, with its incongruous lines, bulging bonnet, odd shapes on the flanks and slab-backed rear view. But what underpins the i3 is clever indeed, with a lightweight inner body made from carbon fibre and carbon fibre reinforced body panels providing the skin, all conspiring to make the i3 light – 1195kg, despite 25 per cent or so of that being batteries – and very rigid.

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.

Mercedes F800 Style Concept: 2011 Mercedes CLS

The Mercedes F800 Concept will be at Geneva and previews the 2011/2012 Mercedes CLS One of the biggest style successes in the car world in the last decade has been the four-door swoopy-coupe. And the whole genre started life – at least in a mainstream way – with the launch of the Mercedes CLS in 1994. It was Mercedes’ return to the ‘Executive Coupe’ market after a ten year gap (the W124 version of the E-Class Coupe) but broke new ground with its four-door configuration in a coupe body.