Volvo C30 C70 S40 V50 Original Equipment Lower Right Engine Mount New 31262676 on 2040-parts.com

Fiat 500X SUV & new baby Jeep confirmed

Fiat has confirmed it is extending the 500 range with the Fiat 500X SUV and will build a new small Jeep crossover on the same platform. We’ve just had the first extension of the 500 range arrive in the UK in the guise of the Fiat 500L (complete with 500L ‘Motherhood’ rap), but the 500L range isn’t going to end there. Following on from a sneak peek at a probable future Fiat 500X SUV back in July, Fiat has now confirmed it is going to put the rufty-tufty version of the 500 in to production and will build it alongside a new baby Jeep crossover – based on the same underpinnings – at its Melfi factory in Italy.

Concept Car of the Week: Oldsmobile Aerotech (1987)

In late 1984, Oldsmobile management had so much confidence in the potential of its new inline four-cylinder engine Quad 4, that a small team was assigned to the creation of the Aerotech, a research vehicle designed to demonstrate the engine's performance by setting a new world speed record. Ed Welburn, then assistant chief designer, was mostly working on the 1988 Cutlass Supreme but his passion for race cars made him the ideal candidate to be handed the assignment by Oldsmobile 2 studio's chief David North. Inspired by Le Mans racers such as the Porsche 917LH and Jim Hall's Chaparrals, he designed a long, flowing car that immediately seduced design director Chuck Jordan and GM management.

Early cars, fashion on display at the Petersen

Automotivated, a new exhibit at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles, traces the evolution of clothes worn in cars--from the bulky circus-tent stuff people had to wear to keep from freezing to death in the jangly, open-topped conveyances of 100 years ago, up to the height of the European Concours in the 1920s and '30s, when what you and your date wore was just as important to winning best of show as the styling of your Delahaye/Delage/Talbot Lago. “In the earliest days of the automobile, you were sitting on the car, you weren't sitting in it,” said Leslie Kendall, curator at the Petersen. So the first section of the exhibit shows people (mannequins dressed as people) in heavy, practical overcoats, scarves and goggles.