Yamaha Yzf600r Yzf 600r Thundercat 1997-2007 06 05 Aftermarket W7 Fairings 22 on 2040-parts.com

Hot seats: from design to delivery [sponsored]

As the user demands on car interiors are increasingly influenced by their growing design consciousness, so suppliers like Lear strive to bring better-engineered seating to satisfy. 2013 was another big year for Lear, as Jeanette Puig-Pey, its global fabric & leather design manager, enthuses: "At our ‘Design2Perform' event we celebrated the unveiling of our brand new collection, with special emphasis on color and texture and our TeXstyle Enhance product, perfect for customization. Laser etching is part of this offering, it is exclusive to Lear Corporation and can be used to add refined design elements to cloth and leather." A mix of fabric and leather in seating is not new but is often seen by the consumer as a cheaper alternative to full leather.

Peugeot 208 T16 Pikes Peak – Sebastian Loeb is impressed (video)

The Pikes Peak hillclimb is an awesome event with more than 150 turns on a course more than 12 miles long running up in to the clouds at the summit of Pikes Peak Mountain. This year Peugeot are back to take on Pikes Peak in a car they like to describe as a Peugeot 208, but apart from the name it has nothing much more than a passing resemblance to Peugeot’s latest hatchback. For a start, it has a 3.2 litre twin-turbo V6 that delivers an incredible 875bhp which is enough to get to 62mph in a neck snapping 1.8 seconds and 150mph in an equally unbelievable 7 seconds.

Designers dress up Mini Cooper

Canadian design duo DSquared2 has released initial sketches of the Mini Cooper Countryman it outfitted for this year's Life Ball, which is on May 21 in Vienna, Austria. Each year, the small-car maker commissions designers to dress up a Mini to be auctioned off at the Life Ball, which donates proceeds to the fight against HIV and AIDS. The “Red Mudder,” as the car is called, is branded with a maple leaf on both doors and a DSquared2 logo on the front shield and wheels.