2003 Volkswagen Jetta Gli 24v Vr6 6-speed Manual Mk4 Bora on 2040-parts.com

Smart car inventor Nicolas Hayek dies

Nicolas Hayek, the engineer and industrialist who founded the Swiss watch company Swatch and brought the world the Smart car, died on June 28 of heart failure at his office in Switzerland. He was 82. Hayek saved the Swiss watch industry from lower-priced Asian competition in the early 1980s by offering colorful, inexpensive Swatch timepieces that he backed with equally colorful marketing.

Mini E electric car(2008): first photos

By Tim Pollard First Official Pictures 20 October 2008 09:36 The Mini has finally gone electric. As scooped by CAR Online, the Mini E is a pure electric car and just 500 will be built for corporate and private customers in the US, although a handful could make it to London where there is also a limited recharging infrastructure. The Mini E will only be available for one year as part of a trial and at the end all will be returned to BMW.

L.A. auto show: Honda to uncork ‘P-NUT’ design study

Honda will tear the cover off a futuristic, ultra-compact urban coupe on Dec. 2 at the Los Angeles auto show. It’s called the Personal-Neo Urban Transport, or P-NUT, and Honda is billing this as an aggressive design study.