Suzuki Lt 500 Quadzilla Drag Pipe on 2040-parts.com

Visteon unveils C-Beyond concept

Car Design News was recently invited to a preview of Visteon's C-Beyond concept, which makes its full debut at the Paris motor show in September. Based on a Citroën C4 Picasso, the C-Beyond is a showcase for new technologies – primarily focused on the car's interior, which permit a degree of flexibility and design expression. The C-Beyond simply looks like a C4 Picasso that incorporates new LED lighting technology.

Ireland preparing to ban smoking in cars

Ireland prepare to ban smoking in cars Maybe the erosion of individual liberties should be secondary to safety (although we would argue the contrary), but surely banning smoking in cars – as Ireland appear close to doing – is a very silly route to go? Of course, since anything that can be remotely construed as a company car is already somewhere you’re not allowed to smoke, banning smoking in private cars is, perhaps, a logical step. The argument is that smoking in cars is detrimental to the health of children who are passengers.

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.