Piper Tripacer Pacer Baggage Door on 2040-parts.com

BMW are rolling out their ‘BMW Genius’ programme across UK dealers

Even when you’re immersed in the latest car news day in and day out, it’s often quite tough to keep up with the new technologies car makers are offering, so many buyers must struggle to know exactly what their options are. That should be a job for the car salesman, but most car salesmen only worry about explaining how good the deal is and how it’s better than any other deal, so buyers often come away with a car that doesn’t fit their needs as well as it could. But with fewer new car buyers really wrapped up in performance and dynamics and more interested in the tech behind the wheels, BMW has been trying out an idea borrowed from Apple Stores by employing ’BMW Geniuses’ at 10 of their UK dealerships to explain the advantages of much of their technology to customers.

The future of headlamp techonology – see it on video

By Richard Yarrow Motor Industry 27 May 2009 10:12 Cars of the future will drive at night with main-beam headlamps on all the time, but never dazzle another vehicle. That’s the vision of American component firm Gentex, which already makes the auto-dipping lights on the current BMW 7-series. Its engineers are working on a new technology called Dynamic Forward Lighting (DFL) which features a single main beam that floods the road with light.

Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV big dealer push – first UK cars being delivered

The Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV – moving quickly in the UK The Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV, the plug-in hybrid Outlander, has been the subject of a big marketing campaign by Mitsubishi in recent weeks, and this weekend sees a big dealer push to educate buyers. But actually, it’s a very easy job for Mitsubishi because they seem to have hit the ground running with a car that could see the beginning of the end of the BEV electric car market. That’s because the Outlander PHEV offers the best of both worlds, with its plug-in hybrid setup offering pure EV running for up to 30 miles or so – enough to get in and out of most cities – and the ability to run on carbon fuel even when the batteries run down.