Ford Tail Light Side Marker Bezel Trim Chrome Unknown (#860) on 2040-parts.com

Volvo Plug-In Hybrid by 2012

Volvo are working on a plug in Hybrid for 2012 offerng 50g/km Co2 emissions Laudable though this intent is, it’s a little like the Vauxhall / Opel Ampera – it relies on technology that doesn’t yet exist to deliver what it promises. But to get things moving, Volvo are going to be running a number of Volvo V70 diesel-electric Hybrids round Europe this year, to guage customer feedback and try to establish exactly what the consumer wants. They also want to establish exactly what the consumer can live with in terms of ‘Re-fuelling’.

Back to basics for VW, says Walter de Silva

By Adam Towler Motor Industry 25 June 2008 13:01 It was an odd place for an inside line into what future Volkswagens will look like, but when head of VW Group design Walter de Silva invited CAR to the old Fiat Lingotto factory in Turin - now a conference and shopping centre – we could hardly say no. De Silva described VW as being immersed in a 'process of defining their design language' which could be read as ‘we’re still sucking our designer thumbs to see what happens’. Audi, De Silva said, had already been through that process and its design DNA was ‘understood by everyone in the company, right down to the smallest details'.

MINI Cooper S & MINI JCW UK Recall

MINI JCW & Cooper S recalled Following on from the US MINI Recall, MINI UK is to recall 29,000 MINI Cooper S and MINI JCW models to fix a faulty circuit board. Yesterday we reported that MINI in the US is to recall 89,000 MINI Coopers to fix a faulty circuit board on the turbo’s auxiliary water pump, and we now learn the recall will be worldwide – although is DOESN’T include the MINI Cooper. It seems the US authorities got it all in a bit of a muddle and included the MINI Cooper in the recall announcement, even though it doesn’t have a turbo and the recall relates to a potentially faulty circuit board on the auxiliary water pumps that cool the turbos.