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BMW takes the Active Tourer Outdoor outdoors this weekend

This weekend BMW will be taking its BMW Concept Active Tourer Outdoor to the annual OutDoor fair in Friedrichshafen, Germany. We first saw the concept last September, noting that it was a departure for BMW in more ways than one -- with the German automaker stretching itself into segments in which it previously had no foothold. The BMW Active Tourer is meant to preview a whole new generation of small cars from BMW, but one of the biggest changes underneath is a transverse layout of the engine -- a setup that BMW has traditionally shunned in favor of a longitudinal layout.

Toyota recalls Highlander hybrid, Lexus RX 400h

Toyota is recalling about 82,000 hybrid vehicles in the United States to fix a flawed control board inside the powertrain. The recall covers about 45,000 Toyota Highlander hybrids and 36,700 Lexus RX 400h hybrids from the 2006 and 2007 model years. Toyota says some of the transistors on the control board might have been improperly soldered and could be damaged from large current flow during high-load driving.

CAR interviews BMW design chief Adrian van Hooydonk (2009)

By Guy Bird Motor Industry 03 November 2009 09:22 CAR: Chris Bangle once told a great story about sending BMW designers to study with an origami master to gain influence. Judging by the Vision EfficientDynamics concept it looks like you were on that trip? Adrian van Hooydonk: I didn’t go along but in the recent past our designers have experimented with a lot of things – folded metal, folded paper, even plywood – and on this concept car maybe all of that came to fruition.