CONFIDENTIAL

GOSSIP | RUMOURS | TRENDS

BMW HAS LAUNCHED a flexible car-sharing service called Reachnow, which includes the ability for owners of apartment buildings to offer cars that residents can use on shortterm hire. BMW and Mini owners in Seattle, where the scheme was launched, can also lend out their car when they don’t need to use it.

HONDA IS ALREADY in the planning stages for the nextgeneration Civic, which will make its debut in 2021. The next Civic will play a key role in Honda’s plan for two-thirds of all its cars sold in Europe to feature some form of electrification. Honda’s Swindon plant director, Jason Smith, said the company is in the very early stages of exploring how a Civic with some form of electrification would be manufactured at the plant.

AUDI’S QUATTRO division was renamed Audi Sport after the original name became too complex to explain in new markets, CEO Rupert Stadler has said. “Quattro was heavily linked to four-wheel drive, and then we would go to new markets like Asia and explain we were a division of Audi called Quattro Gmbh. People just got lost. Having our road and competition activities under one banner with a simple name communicates what we do.”

WHEN MAZDA DESIGNS a car, it starts by designing an object first. It boils down the design it wants to achieve to an abstract object, showing the design in its purest form before then applying it to the style of car it wants to create. Mazda then designs other products to the same theme, such as chairs and bicycles.