Yamaha Star Bolt R-spec Passenger Kit Seat Pegs Gytr Accessories Xvs950 V-star on 2040-parts.com

Contest: Volkswagen Slipstream wins 2007 LA Design Challenge

Volkswagen's Slipstream concept has won the fourth annual Design Challenge competition, part of the Design Los Angeles automobile designer's conference. The award was presented during the second press day of the 2007 Los Angeles Auto Show.  The theme of this year's competition, RoboCar of 2057, asked eight automotive design studios in California to form their vision of the future by depicting a vehicle that incorporates artificial intelligence engineered to make life easier and more attractive to consumers 50 years from now. Designers entered two-dimensional renderings and concept descriptions predicting how the rapidly advancing field of artificial intelligence will integrate into the automobile to make life safer, more practical and attractive, and the entries were judged by multi-discipline design professionals who selected the winner based on its originality of creative concept, integration of robotics and level of adaptation to a variety of environmental conditions and consumer needs.

Wiedeking to be offered $140 million to quit Porsche, report says

Porsche CEO Wendelin Wiedeking could be offered a $141 million (100 million euros) payoff to quit the sports car maker to make way for a merger with Volkswagen, Germany's Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper reported Friday. The newspaper said Wiedeking has been visited by Porsche Chairman Wolfgang Porsche in the past few days, who “made it clear” that the embattled CEO should step down. Wiedeking has come under fire for allowing Porsche's holding company to amass debts of more than $12.7 billion (9 billion euros) during a failed attempt to take over VW.

Bentley future design competition held at Hongik University, South Korea

Bentley has held its first design competition in collaboration with a university outside the UK. Director of design, Luc Donckerwolke, and head of exterior and advanced design, Sangyup Lee, tasked students at Hongik University in Seoul with designing a Bentley that would be released in 2040. In addition to looking to the future, students were asked to take the Bentley 'Blue Train' as inspiration: the car driven by three-time Le Mans-winner, Woolf Barnato, who, in March 1930, bet £100 that he could drive his Bentley from Cannes in the south of France to The Conservative Club in London in the time it took the luxurious Blue Train to travel from Cannes to Calais on the English Channel.