Zx10 Rear Tire Hugger on 2040-parts.com

Beijing Auto Show 2014 – Trends and Overview

With the New York auto show just one week earlier, many carmakers took the decision to use the Beijing show as their preferred choice of launch event. While the NYC expo holds decent sway on the US East coast, it could never hope to compete with the lure of the world's biggest – and fastest expanding – car market. With over 1,300 cars on display from scores of brands – both domestic and foreign – it's a fascinating bazaar of automotive hardware across the entire bandwidth of the industry.

Rosberg & Hamilton make it a Mercedes front row: Spanish Grand Prix (2013)

Maybe Lewis Hamilton wasn’t as daft as we all thought jumping ship from McLaren and heading off to Mercedes F1. When we all thought the Mercedes F1 team didn’t have a chance of doing anything special in 2013, Hamilton and Rosberg have proved the 2013 car is a strong contender, and in final qualifying for tomorrow’s Spanish Grand Prix they’ve locked out the front row. Hamilton’s team mate Rosberg beat him to pole position – his second pole in a row – with Red Bull’s Vettel having to settle for third place alongside Kimi Raikkonen’s Lotus.

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.