Smart Forspeed concept (2011) at 2011 Geneva motor show

Remember the Smart Crossblade? Smart has produced another chop-top Fortwo - the Forspeed EV concept due to bow in at next week's 2011 Geneva motor show. The Forspeed apes the 2002 Crossblade, a roofless, doorless concept that was the perfect city runabout...

GM gets behind Vauxhall & Opel by dropping Chevrolet in Europe

Cars like the Chevrolet Trax (pictured) will disappear from the UK in 2015 GM has seemed to be fighting a battle with itself in the UK and Europe by marketing a broadly similar range of cars under the Vauxhall and Opel badges in the UK and Opel and Chevrolet in Europe. But unlike the VW Group, which manages to offer very similar cars from VW, SEAT and Skoda and create a different customer base, GM seems to have failed to make the marketplace work with Opel and Vauxhall competing with Chevrolet. So Chevrolet are on their way out in Europe.

Official: Aston Martin gets its hands on Mercedes AMG engines & Electronic Architecture

Aston Martin & AMG confirm they’re getting in bed together Back in December we reported that Aston Martin had new investment from Investindustrial and wondered if that would mean – thanks to an existing relationship between Investindustrial and AMG – if we’d see Aston Martin finally getting access to AMG’s engines and platforms. By May, things had moved on and it was clear that Aston Martin and AMG were in talks for Aston Martin to get access to their engines for the next generation of AML’s cars. Now those talks have borne fruit and AMG and AML have signed a letter of intent for Aston Martin to “access significant Mercedes-AMG GmbH and Mercedes-Benz Cars’ resources, allowing the development of bespoke V8 powertrains and the use of certain components of electric/electronic (e/e) architecture.” Interestingly, there’s no talk of V12 engines – which could mean Aston Martin are going to move from the current Ford V12 for the DB9 and Vanquish to a powerful V8 from AMG – and nor is there talk of sharing platforms.