Black Motor Vehicle Parts Steel Can Molding Smoke Cigarette Ashtray Cup Holder on 2040-parts.com

McLaren F1 – The perfect safe haven in troubled times

The McLaren F1 (along with its ‘Super’ brother, the LM) is considered by many to be the ultimate road car. Light, fast and enormously desirable, the F1 has been a stunning success story. Initially conceived in the late ’80s, and coming to fruition with the launch of the first road car in 1995, just 65 road-going F1s where made between 1995 and 1998, with 5 further LMs (6 if you count the prototype, which is still owned by McLaren and promised to Lewis Hamilton if he pulls of the double World Championship by winning in 2009).

Mercedes CLS (2011 / 2012) spied undisguised

Mercedes CLS 2011 Spy shot The Mercedes CLS was the first - and some would say still the best - interpretation of a four door swoopy-coupe. It set the benchmark for cars to follow and made the genre hugely desirable. We now have everyone from VW to Porsche and Aston Martin to Jaguar producing 4 door coupes, with Audi joining in with the Sportbacks and BMW about to put the Gran Coupe in to production.

Autodesk Automotive Days - Munich 2009

Autodesk's Automotive Days design conferences, launched in Munich in 2008, have highlighted the key growth area of digital prototyping. And at last month's conference the focus was once again broadened to include coverage of conceptual design and creative visualization (at the very beginning of the design process) and design for manufacture - at the culmination of the process. Speakers from Autodesk outlined the innovative features of their latest product suites, while keynote presentations from leading automotive designers such as Frank Stephenson of McLaren and Volvo's Rickard Franklin showed in fascinating detail how the benefits of these software systems were being maximized in busy corporate design studios.