1999 Buick Lesabre Door Latch Driver Left Rear 2644002 on 2040-parts.com

Volvo uses Facebook to research new interior solutions

Volvo is using Facebook to conduct market research into how drivers use their cars' interiors via its new 'You Inside' app. Users are asked to create a personal profile that includes the car they drive, their lifestyle and a list of day-to-day items they keep inside their car. The aim is to identify new design solutions based around qualitative data.

Most smokers want ban in cars

NINE OUT of 10 (89%) of smokers say lighting up a cigarette or any form of tobacco should be banned in cars. Following on from the Welsh government’s announcement that it would outlaw smoking in cars where there are children as passengers, a study shows evens smokers think puffing on a cigarette in a car is not acceptable. Research carried out by Flexed shows 89% of smokers support a complete ban and 96% of non-smokers believe smoking in cars should be outlawed.

Bridgestone’s ‘We’ve been everywhere’ Road Trip prize giving

Bridgestone’s ‘I’ve been everywhere’ Road Trip Flogging tyres isn’t the easiest job in the world; we all need them – at intervals far too regular than we’d like – but buyers tend to fall in to two camps – those who know a brand and ask for it by name, and those that have put on their car whatever the man at Kwik Fit is pushing this week. So ‘Brand Awareness’ is the name of the game (a game that can backfire – just ask Pirelli what’s going on in F1) and the more potential buyers a tyre brand can lodge its name in the brain of, the better. Which is why Bridgestone are running their We’ve been everywhere interactive campaign which very cleverly plots the escape of one man from office drudgery and showcases his journey out in to the proper world, all to a soundtrack of Johnny Cash’s ‘I’ve been everywhere’.