1994 Nissan 300zx 2+2 Coupe 2-door 3.0l on 2040-cars

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Nissan gives us the business on the art of clay modeling

The team from The Dashboard recently stopped by the Nissan Technical Center in Japan for a look at what exactly goes into creating a full-scale clay model. While automakers have been using clay bucks for decades, designers and engineers are now combining computer renderings and hand-sculpted clay models to determine how a new vehicle will look in our world. Engineers use specially formulated clay kept warm in an oven to bring the body panels to life. They then coat the clay in a thin plastic film to add body color for the final look.
By the time everything is said and done, workers may have hundreds of hours in the model's creation. So, what happens when the company no longer needs the buck? They get scrapped. Someone comes in and dismantles the whole creation. We presume that action is set to the wailing tears of everyone who had a hand in building the model. Check out the video below for a closer look.

Renault COO Tavares dreams of running GM or Ford

What do you do if you're in a job with no upward mobility? Admittedly, most of us just stick it out while secretly hoping our boss is sacked for all those paperclips he's been swiping, netting us a nice, shiny promotion. Then again, most of us aren't the number two at Renault, like Carlos Tavares.
Tavares is the right-hand man to Renault CEO, Carlos Ghosn, and like a lot of us, he's ready for another challenge. As Ghosn is only 59 years old and doesn't have a boss to fire him for paperclip theft, though, it's pretty unlikely that he'll be going anywhere anytime soon. Tavares doesn't seem too concerned, based on an interview he gave to Automotive News. "We have a big leader and he is here to stay," Tavares told AN.
What's surprising is where Tavares wants to go, "Why not GM? I would be honored to lead a company like GM." The Renault exec also mentioned Ford, and as AN points out, both organizations make a lot of sense. Both are led by CEOs that are approaching or are already past retirement age, and should be looking for dedicated replacements in the not-so-distant future. That doesn't mean Tavares is a shoe-in, though.

Nissan teases New York-bound 2015 Murano

It was over a month ago when we received reports that Nissan would be unveiling the new Murano at the New York Auto Show next month. Now the Japanese automaker has confirmed its imminent arrival, offering up the brief teaser clip below to give us a very faint idea of what to expect.
In announcing the Murano's upcoming debut in Manhattan, the company described the Murano as "the halo vehicle for Nissan's expanding range of bold crossovers and SUVs," previewing the design that will distinguish a whole range of Nissans to follow.
Short of that, we've got little to go on, but we're expecting to see some traits from the Resonance concept of 2013 Detroit vintage finding their way onto the production version of a vehicle that has always been rather stylized from the start. Something (sales figures, perhaps?) tells us that the oddball CrossCabriolet will get lost along the way, not that we'll mind.