Mercury Marine/mercruiser New Oem Installer Tool 91-13664 on 2040-parts.com

Tomorrow's world: the touchscreen steering wheel

You might think the steering wheel has done a pretty good job of directing cars for the past century. But now a team of researchers from the University of Stuttgart is attempting to reinvent the wheel. The scientists have come up with a touchscreen steering wheel, which they reckon could replace the humble wheel with stereo and cruise controls.

Flavio Manzoni on the design secrets of the Ferrari LaFerrari [w/Video]

Flavio Manzoni has explained the secrets behind the design of the LaFerrari hypercar in an interview with Autocar's Steve Sutcliffe. Ferrari's design chief, speaking at the Ferrari Museum in Maranello, talks of how the LaFerrari was designed to manifest the future of Ferrari and mark a milestone in the design process. Presentations of four 1:1 scale models adorn the walls of the room kept exclusively for project LaFerrari, although there were five initial presentations – three from Ferrari and two from Pininfarina.

CES: GM to open the dashboard to developers

At last year's Autoweek Design Forum, father of the iPod and Nest Labs co-founder Tony Fadell suggested that automakers concentrate on designing and building cars, leaving handset makers to handle infotainment. The latest announcements from Ford and GM -- in conjunction with the International CES -- suggest that automakers would rather treat the dashboard space as a handset. Yesterday, Dearborn, Mich., announced the Ford Developer Program, which opens up Sync to outside application development; now General Motors has announced a similar initiative.