Yamaha 350 Raptor Frame Chassis Yfm350s #21 2006 * Local on 2040-parts.com

GM leapfrogs Toyota

By Chris Hope Motor Industry 24 July 2007 10:19 Is General Motors winning the battle, but not the war? GM this week wrestled back its top spot as the world's biggest car maker from Toyota. The Japanese maker was the global number one in the first quarter of 2007 but GM has hit back in the second quarter from April to June to reclaim its 76-year-old crown.

OFFICIAL: BMW M4 Concept

The BMW M4 Concept (pictured) has been revealed The BMW M4 heading towards Pebble Beach this weekend (and pictured above) is billed by BMW as the M4 Concept, but it’s almost exactly what you’ll get when the M4 goes on sale in 2014. As this is a ‘Concept’ BMW don’t feel the need to fill in all the details, but there’s some stuff we can see and some stuff we pretty much know. The stuff we can see includes the same CFRP roof the old M3 Coupe got (in this case titivated with BMW M colours) and CFRP for the splitter and diffuser.

Hot seats: from design to delivery [sponsored]

As the user demands on car interiors are increasingly influenced by their growing design consciousness, so suppliers like Lear strive to bring better-engineered seating to satisfy. 2013 was another big year for Lear, as Jeanette Puig-Pey, its global fabric & leather design manager, enthuses: "At our ‘Design2Perform' event we celebrated the unveiling of our brand new collection, with special emphasis on color and texture and our TeXstyle Enhance product, perfect for customization. Laser etching is part of this offering, it is exclusive to Lear Corporation and can be used to add refined design elements to cloth and leather." A mix of fabric and leather in seating is not new but is often seen by the consumer as a cheaper alternative to full leather.