1994 Bmw 318i Base Convertible 2-door 1.8l on 2040-cars

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Toyota close to licensing deal with BMW for fuel cell technology

For over a year now, we've been hearing about a potential partnership between Toyota and BMW on everything from sports cars to lithium-ion batteries, but one of the first cooperative projects between these two automakers could bring Toyota's hydrogen fuel cell technology to a BMW vehicle. Reuters is reporting that an announcement is likely to be made as soon as later this week regarding a BMW fuel cell vehicle that could be in production by 2020 with a prototype running around by 2015.
The last we heard of Toyota's fuel cell technology, it was in the FCV-R Concept that we saw at the 2011 Tokyo Motor Show, but there is no word how far along in development this system is. If it does come to fruition, such a vehicle for BMW would build on the automaker's commitment to hydrogen that started with the Hydrogen 7, which unlike a fuel cell vehicle, simply ran on hydrogen fuel rather than converting it to electricity for use in motors. We're definitely interested where this Toyota/BMW tie up could be headed.

BMW reveals i8 Concours d'Elegance Edition ahead of Pebble Beach

If you want to be among the first owners in the United States of the new BMW i8, the Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance will be the place to be next Saturday. That's where Gooding & Company will auction off this one-of-a-kind hybrid supercar.
The BMW i8 Concours d'Elegance Edition was previously slated to be the very first i8 in North America, but has now apparently been downgraded to the guarantee of being among the firsts. In any event, it packs a series of special touches to make it unique. For starters, it's decked out in matte grey with unique brown leather upholstery, blue accents and Pure Impulse Tera World trim, with BMW i8 logos embossed into the headrests, special treat plates and the signatures of several key BMW personnel on the rear parcel shelf.
Pending government approval, it's set to be the first vehicle in the US fitted with laser headlights, and comes equipped with a special key, Louis Vuitton luggage and a "professional edition" BMW Charging Station. Scope out all the details in the press release below and take a closer look in the gallery above.

BMW rethinks all-wheel-drive M cars

BMW M hasn't been able to decide whether it wants to jump on the all-wheel-drive bandwagon or not (with the exceptions of the X5 M and the X6 M, which are based on AWD architecture). That might be changing though, since M's president Friedrich Nitschke recently realized that 70 to 80 percent of Mercedes-Benz E63 AMGs are ordered with all-wheel drive. Earlier this year, Nitschke said that there were no new AWD M models planned, so this comes as somewhat of a surprise.
"On our cars we are thinking of all-wheel drive, but it won't come before we get the successor of the M5 and M6," Nitschke said in a Motoring report. "That's the timing and it's not practical to react in the current life cycles."
"On our cars we are thinking of all-wheel drive." - Friedrich Nitschke, BMW