1998 Mercedes Benz Sl500 W129 Secondary Air Injection Pump on 2040-parts.com

Festival of the Unexceptional: the bad cars we love

Ever been to a classic car show and noticed how many old MGBs and sports cars of yesteryear have turned up, driven by their proud owners, but wondered what happened to all the more mainstream stuff? There are twice as many Ferrari 308 GTBs on the roads in the UK than Austin Allegros, because the everyday cars of the past fail MOTs, get chucked away and replaced with shiny new hatchbacks. Fortunately, there is a select group of people in the UK who care for the mundane stuff of yesterday and, because of this, a new event for “unexceptional” cars will be taking place this summer.

Ford Shelby GT500 Cobra with 850hp pays tribute to Carroll Shelby

‘Friends of Carroll Shelby’ pay tribute to the man with an 850hp Ford Shelby GT500 Cobra, finished in Guardsman Blue/Wimbledon White stripe paint. Carroll Shelby – an man who understood performance cars perhaps better than any other American – died in May of this year, aged 89, after a life lived to the full. As a fitting tribute to the man who gave Ford the sort of performance cars they could never have dreamt of building, a very special Ford Shelby GT500 Cobra has been built to remember him by ‘The Friends of Carroll Shelby’.

Volkswagen to buy 42 percent of Porsche, full merger planned

Volkswagen will buy 42 percent of Porsche's sports-car business en route to a full merger by the end of 2011, the companies announced Thursday. VW will pay $4.7 billion for its initial stake in Porsche. It positions the new company to have 10 brands and global sales of 6.4 million, and Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn is likely to lead the entity.