650i Auto Sport/premium/heated Pkg Hud Nice Must See!!! on 2040-cars

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What does the open patents deal mean for Tesla ... and BMW?

Gift to the world or trade bait? Tesla Motors announced this week it would open its patents for other automakers to use. That has analysts guessing whether the California-based electric-vehicle maker is looking to either swap trade secrets with other automakers or to expand the proverbial pie that represents the plug-in vehicle market. For its part, Tesla says the answer is B. BMW, which is establishing its i sub-brand of plug-in vehicles, would be a natural collaborator with Tesla, Forbes says. In fact, executives from the two companies met in Europe this week. Details were not released, but a BMW spokesman said, "Both companies are strongly committed to the success of electromobility and discussed how to further strengthen the development of electromobility on an international level." While Tesla brings battery technology to the table, BMW offers its carbon-fiber advancements that lighten vehicle-body weight. Those advancements are key to range-extending efforts and could do wonders for Tesla on its journey to help spur technology for the sake of getting more of the general public to accept plug-in technology as a viable first-car option. Then again, Forbes says Tesla, whose investors include Mercedes-Benz parent Daimler and Toyota, may be keeping its best technologies to itself by not patenting certain advancements at all. What's in Tesla's patent pool? uAutoInsurance analyzed Tesla's 249 patents and found that 104 of them related to battery technology, while 28 pertained to recharging activity, which wasn't surprising (about a quarter of those 249 patents couldn't readily be categorized). Tesla also has nine patents related to sunroof technology. The company is based in California, after all.

Junkyard Gem: 1982 BMW 633CSi

The E24 6 Series was one of the best-looking cars ever to grace a BMW showroom, and it was the car for successful Californians with a sense of style— whether boardroom heroes or purveyors of not-so-legal substances— to show off their wealth and taste. The E24 is quite collectible now, but the cost of restoration for a worn-out one is so high that many solid examples end up here. I spotted this '82 in a San Francisco Bay Area self-service yard last week. The 3.2-liter straight-six engine in this car was rated at 181 horsepower, which was quite a bit in a year when a new Cadillac Eldorado had just 120hp and a Datsun 280ZX Turbo a mere 180. There wasn't much serious competition in 1982 for a powerful imported luxury coupe with gangsterish overtones. If you were a bent banker treating your savings-and-loan as a personal cash machine in 1982, your mainstream choices were limited to this car, a Mercedes-Benz 380SLC, or a Jaguar XJ-S. For those who hit the big time, the Ferrari 400i and Rolls-Royce Camargue were available... but you'd see a hundred 633CSis for each of those in the wild. What time is it? Time for The Crusher! Related Video: Featured Gallery 1982 BMW 633CSi in California Junkyard View 17 Photos Auto News BMW Coupe Economy Cars Classics

BMW CS reinterpretation proves retro can be sexy [w/video]

Designer David Obendorfer doesn't work for BMW, but perhaps the German automaker should give him a call. His CS Vintage Concept shows a singular ability to understand the brand's classic style and reinterpret it for today. He isn't some amateur, either. Obendorfer has an industrial design degree and has been penning the interiors and exteriors of yachts from the Officina Italiana Design for five years, which counts luxury shipbuilders like Riva and Sanlorenzo among its clients. His website shows a real passion and knack for modernizing '60s and '70s European cars, too.
Obendorfer prefers to reimagine classic automotive styles. "Retro cars are not copies of their predecessors or renovated specimens, rather they are carefully studied reconsiderations, strongly rooted in contemporary style," he tells Autoblog. For the CS Vintage Concept, he worked to update the looks of the seminal BMW 2000CS and its E9 chassis while placing them on a modern platform. Obendorfer's inspiration comes from his belief that the later CS models' design is partially responsible for defining BMW styling, with its shark-nose front and four round headlights.
The CS Vintage Concept's shape starts with a jutting hood and a quartet of LED headlights, but the whole design really comes together in profile. The Hofmeister Kink at the rear pillar with the BMW Roundel is a nice nod to the originals, yet the proportions still find the perfect fusion of classic and modern. The interior is minimalist, with a vast expanse of wood for the dashboard at first glance, but the latter opens to expose the car's infotainment system.