2000 Mercedes C230 Kompressor / C280 / C43 Amg Owners Manual on 2040-parts.com

Future products: Kia seeks lively, upscale look

Kia's redesigned Optima sedan and the Cadenza replacement for the Amanti, both due next year, reflect an emphasis on creating a livelier and more upscale look for the once-bland brand. Indeed, styling has been a crucial element of Kia's new-product push in the past 18 months. The team at Kia Design Center America near Los Angeles--part of the automaker's global design network led by onetime Audi design chief Peter Schreyer--has helped set the new styling direction.

New car sales accelerate again

NEW CAR SALES could be back to pre-recession levels by the end of this year after a good start to 2014. Latest figures from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) show there were 176,820 new vehicles registered in April - an 8.2% rise on the same month last year. Last month's figure took the total for the year so far to 864,942 - a 12.5% increase on the first four months of 2013.

Help Carr Magazine produce its next issue with Kickstarter

Carr Magazine, the insider publication for the car design community, is reaching out via its Kickstarter campaign to fund its fifth issue. Carr has always prided itself on ad-free pages and continual focus on the future of car design but to do this needs some help from its readers as the team looks to improve its circulation and bolster content. Their previous methods of content collection, publication and distribution have occasionally been hampered by purposefully small team but with this campaign they are aiming to produce more of the same quality content and distribute it faster and more efficiently to their truly global audience.