Automotive Journal

We have got a motor show on in London this week and it even looks like the weather is finally looking up here.

Is the London event a biggie? It’s sizeable but no, it’s not up there with the big shows and is still to become properly established in the automakers’ diaries. A number of them are absent and I guess the current economic backdrop doesn’t augur particularly well for consumer visits.

But this is only

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The style of the takeover bid for Conti by family-owned German bearings maker Schaeffller is a little bit reminiscent of the manner in which Porsche has got control of Volkswagen; it’s a gradual affair in which a smaller company gets control of a much bigger one by taking advantage of a low share price. And it looks likely to succeed.

Is it a good or bad

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Al Gore certainly knows how to make the news. He’s just said that the US needs to do away with all forms of carbon-emitting electricity production within ten years (er, easier said than done). Yep, that will grab some attention. At least he

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Al Gore certainly knows how to make the news. He’s just said that the US needs to do away with all forms of carbon-emitting electricity production within ten years (er, easier said than done). Yep, that will grab some attention. At least he should spark some serious debate about energy policy in the US and that’s no bad thing

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I recall that a few years ago there was an artist who covered landmark buildings with something like giant blankets. I think the Brandenberg Gate in Berlin was one. It made quite a visual impact.

Industrial buildings are often dull to look at. There is a brutal functional form thing going on and it’s rare that an industrial building is pleasing on the eye. 

I liked this draping thing going on at Ford in Germany. This could catch on, if the local

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It’s become very fashionable to mock the ‘Health and Safety’ culture, but if H&S procedures and systems can reduce accidents, that’s no bad thing. Accidents can blow up out of nowhere.

I was talking to Mark Bursa earlier - he’s been at the Farnborough Air Show this week turning his hand to producing copy for an aero publication. As he typed away, he noticed the bloke sat next to him was trying to adjust his chair. The seat and the seat ‘chassis’ had, unknowingly, become separated due

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Bright greys? Just come across a term that stuck while leafing through AM magazine. What does the Daihatsu brand say to you? An unfashionable marque that majors in dull but competitively priced small cars with Japanese kei-class roots (the Copen being a stylish exception to the dullards rule)? That’s maybe a little

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Just been having a chat on the phone with Jesse Crosse - one of our contributors on the technical side - about some of the very latest developments with diesel engines. Some of the results of the latest R&D out there sound genuinely exciting in terms of how efficient and clean the technology can become. An article is in the pipeline.

Jesse is good at demystifying subjects that can be hard to get the old brain around. Here’s

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There’s a thoughtful series running in the Daily Telegraph comparing America and China’s societies - it’s a bit of a travelogue, with some extremely pertinent observations made. The latest has a look at Chongqing - a rapidly developing city where a number of car plants are to be found, including a Ford JV.

Very nice work at the Telegraph, a British daily newspaper enjoying a kind of reinvention on the web that is slightly at odds with its rather

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China is so desperate to look good in the eyes of the world with the Beijing Olympics that it’s almost painful to see the PR problems being dealt with in a rather ham-fisted manner (why does the world not understand us?). After the clumsy spectacle of the Chinese secret service goons accompanying the Olympic torch and being outwitted

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