“You can only invent the car once; after that, it’s just constant refinement. That’s what we’ve been doing with safety. From crumple zones and the airbag—and even before that—we’ve kept on pushing the boundaries of what’s possible, all in an effort to make the road a safer place for everyone. Note that some features depicted in this video are specific to the European market.”

“Chief testing guru Matt Becker puts the Lotus Evora S IPS through its paces at our Hethel test track. The Evora S IPS combines the power of the supercharged S with the versatility of an auto transmission, and in sport mode, it’s a dynamic race bred machine.”

 FROM EDMUNDS INSIDE LINE:  DRB-Hicom, the new Malaysian owner of Group Lotus, which has just agreed to buy a controlling stake in the sports car maker’s corporate parent Proton, will consider selling the British marque.

Mohd Khamil Jamil, managing director of DRB-Hicom, said Wednesday that the company is “open to options.”

“We will need time to look into Lotus,” he told reporters today in Selangor, near Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital, according to Bloomberg.

The potential sale of Lotus is confirmation of a possibility hinted at by Lotus boss Dany Bahar to Inside Line as long ago as last May. Bahar said he believed that a company the size of Lotus cannot develop cars on its own that meet future emissions and crash regulations — it has to be linked to a larger global automaker, such as Toyota, through either an alliance or even a sale. He also suggested that Lotus could be spun off or floated and publicly traded. MORE»

 FROM WASHINGTON POST:  Swedish Automobile NV, the parent company of Dutch luxury car maker Spyker and the now-bankrupt Saab Automobile, says it will push on with the sale of the Spyker brand and issue new shares in a bid for survival, in spite of an exodus of its supervisory board.

The company, known as “Swan”, said Wednesday that it was in negotiations to sell Spyker. In September it announced it planned to sell the brand to U.S. private equity firm North Street Capital for €32 million ($41 million). MORE»

FROM THE WALL STREET JOURNAL:  Ford Motor Co. plans to open a research lab in Silicon Valley early this year, joining a wave of other companies investing in the area and trying to mine it for cutting-edge technology to build into their products.

The lab, run by Ford Research and Innovation, the Dearborn, Mich., company’s advanced engineering arm, will be a hub for tech projects and will identify new research investments and partners on the West Coast, Ford said.

The company said it was in the final stages of securing a site for the lab near Stanford University. When it opens in the first quarter, the facility will be Ford’s first dedicated research-and-development office on the West Coast. MORE»

FROM NY DAILY NEWS:  Fiat’s 500 supermini will reportedly come in a larger version, to be unveiled at the Geneva Motor Show in March.

The Italian brand, which has seen poor sales of the 500 since launching it in the US, is gearing up to release a wagon version of the tiny model, reports Automotive News.

Although details on the model are currently scarce, it’s believed to be a more roomy version developed specifically for the US market and is likely to come with a high-performance variant from sister brand Abarth. MORE»