Toyota Supra Mk4 Side Vent Brake Vent on 2040-parts.com

Lorenzo Ramaciotti visits RCA for 'Two of a Kind' project

Lorenzo Ramaciotti, Fiat-Chrysler's head of global design, has visited the Royal College of Art as part of the Fiat ‘Two of a Kind' project explaining how Italian design has become world-famous in all fields in a talk themed ‘The Roots of Italian Car Design'. The ‘Two of a Kind' project asks four teams of four Vehicle Design students to design innovative exterior and interior proposals for how the Fiat 500 and the Panda might look in 2020, taking interactivity, digital interface, sustainability and global appeal into account. Maserati brought along a Quattroporte, a GranTurismo Sport as well as an Alfa Giulietta Sportiva to complement his talk in the hope it would encourage students to consider what the carmaker believes are the three concepts of the legacy of Italian car design: sportiness-dynamism; elegance-balance; and character-personality.

Renault Captur Compact SUV production version teased

Renault has started the tease for their Clio Crossover – likely the Renault Captur – ahead of a debut at the Geneva Motor Show in March. The booming market for compact crossovers to blat round our congested urban landscape sees car maker scrabbling to offer up a product that can take the fight to cars like the Nissan Juke, and Renault’s offering in the market will arrive at the Geneva Motor Show in March – the Renault Captur. Before you get too excited, the production version of the Renault Captur appears to have little in common with the Captur Concept we saw at Geneva in 2011 – except for the name – and looks likely to be nothing more than a high-riding Clio 4 with added butchness.

First MINI Coupé rolls off the production line

MINI Coupe - first production car rolls out at Cowley We’ve only recently had the reveal of the new MINI Coupe – well, the production car reveal, that is. We had the first reveal of the MINI Coupe Concept nearly two years ago and, despite the production MINI Coupe looking almost exactly the same as the concept, MINI managed to do the production reveal in two stages – one with swirly disguise round the rump followed by a full reveal a week or three later. Still, all the pre-production marketing flim-flam out of the way, MINI are getting down to actually making the car that promises to be the most fun (modern) MINI so far, and the very first MINI Coupe has now rolled off the production line at Cowley – cue PR opportunity.