1969 Ford Galaxie Rear Tail Lamp Door Bezel C9az-13489-b on 2040-parts.com

Toyota A-BAT concept (2008): first official pictures

By Guy Bird First Official Pictures 15 January 2008 13:39 Toyota’s latest Detroit concept flips on its head the current orthodoxy that pick-ups can’t be green. The A-BAT is a compact pick-up, akin to a RAV4 in size, featuring a four-cylinder petrol/electric hybrid and solar panels built into the top of the dashboard efficient enough to power the sat-nav and other interior tools. The much-vaunted Prius was indeed an influence in the A-BAT’s green-tinged exterior design leanings.

First BMW i8 for US to be auctioned at Pebble Beach

The Frozen Grey BMW i8 for Pebble Beach The other end of the scale from BMW’s i3 City Car is the BMW i8 Supercar and, despite its modest 1.5 litre range-extender engine for its electric propulsion it seems to offer proper borderline supercar performance. With just an estimated 500 BMW i8s heading for the US this year, BMW has decided it would be a bit of a wheeze to produce a one-off i8 for the US market to plonk in Gooding and Co’s auction at Pebble Beach in August to give one lucky American buyer the chance to jump the queue for the i8 and inject some funds in to Pebble. So they’ve created a special i8 for Pebble which comes with a Frozen Grey Metallic paint job and a titivated interior with Dalbergia Brown Leather upholstery that’s been dyed using plant extracts – all very ‘Green’ – with BMW i Blue for the stitching and highlights.

First Sight: Mercedes-Benz SL

The new high-tech, low weight Mercedes SL roadster receives its official global unveil next week in Detroit but Car Design News got an early peek of the final production car and had a chat with its designers at Mercedes' US advanced design studio in Carlsbad, California back in November. "We want to get back to clean, long-lasting design," director of Mercedes global advanced design and SL project leader, Steffen Kohl told CDN at the exclusive preview of the sixth-generation model. "So the new SL is long, sleek and still full of tension in the feature lines but less wedgy." In a short presentation Kohl felt all SLs became successfully iconic in their times because they followed two key rules – ‘sensuality' and ‘cleanness' – but alluded that the first rule may have been lost in more recent eras.