1984 Suzuki Lt 185 E Rear Brake Drum on 2040-parts.com

Toyota to unlock secrets of black-box recorders

Reacting to criticism that data from black-box crash recorders in its vehicles can be accessed only by the company, Toyota Motor Corp. is moving to ship hundreds of data-decoding machines to the United States and make them commercially available to help diagnose vehicle problems. The devices, known as event data recorders, are similar to the black boxes on airliners and record information such as vehicle and engine speed in the seconds before a crash.

2012 Volkswagen Beetle Spied

The 2012 Volkswagen Beetle looks almost production-ready Yes, the next generation of the ‘New’ VW Beetle us upon us, certainly if the spy shots we’ve got of an almost undisguised 2012 VW Beetle are anything to go by. And we did report that VW should debut the 2012 VW Beetle in 2011 before a 2012 launch as long ago as October 2009. So it all adds up Not surprisingly, this 2012 Beetle has been snapped pounding round the US – the one place it’s sold really well.

VW unveils electric e-Up (2013) at Frankfurt motor show

VW is dipping its toes into the electric car pool with its first battery vehicle: an electric Up city car. Christened the 'e-Up', it's not a special edition for Yorkshire only, but rather a silent, zero-emission EV that VW reckons is the perfect commuter's tool. Read on for the full spec.