Yamaha Tri-moto Yt125 Shift Shifter Lever Pedal on 2040-parts.com

Volvo announces 2014 XC90’s world-first safety tech

The next Volvo XC90 SUV will arrive in 2014 with loaded with world-first safety technology to take on the Audi Q7 and Land Rover Discovery. The safety arsenal will include after-dark pedestrian detection, road barrier detection, as well as fully autonomous cruise control  and parking capability.  It’s the latest salvo from Volvo’s crack team of safety-obsessed engineers in the fight to realise the company’s ‘Vision 2020’ target – that no occupant of a new Volvo will be killed or seriously injured in an accident by 2020.

Daimler and Renault-Nissan strike a global partnership

Daimler today struck a wide-ranging partnership with the Renault-Nissan alliance, in a deal that will usher in new jointly developed cars, shared technologies and a multitude of cost savings.  Cars such as the new 2014 Smart Fortwo will now be twinned with the next Renault Twingo, while the Forfour is set for a comeback and we can expect plenty of shared combustion engines and electric motors, borrowed platforms and jointly developed SUV tech across all three parties. And that's only scratching the surface of the possibilities opened up by this wide-ranging deal.

Ford Cortina: 50 years ago today…

Ford are celebrating 50 years since the first Ford Cortina was launched and changed the car landscape forever. The Ford Cortina went on to sell an impressive 4.3 million during its twenty year life, eventually turning in to the Ford Sierra and then in to the Ford family car of today – the 2013 Ford Mondeo (which, interestingly, can be had with the 1.0 litre EcoBoost engine – smaller even than the 1200cc of that first Cortina). That first Cortina was the start of Ford’s dominance of the UK car market, leading to an unbroken run of 35 years as the best selling car brand with most of the Cortinas, almost 3 million of them, built at Dagenham – in the days Ford actually built cars here.