2000 Volkswagen Passat Manual Transmission 1075024 on 2040-parts.com

Porsche 911 GT3 R Hybrid (2011) first official pictures

Porsche has released details of its updated 911 GT3 R Hybrid – the 2010 original nearly won last year's Nurburgring 24hr race before (ironically) it retired with petrol engine failure.  The 2011 Porsche 911 GT3 R Hybrid – the lowdown Before this report disappears in a chorus of ‘it looks the same as last year’s one’, let's outline where Porsche’s engineers have been busy. At the unfashionable end of the car remains a 4.0-litre flat-six engine producing approximately 470bhp. Up front are twin electric motors, now producing 75kW of power each (up from 60kW) and combined these give the GT3 R Hybrid a 197bhp electric boost, which can be programmed to activate automatically via the throttle pedal, or manually selected during overtaking. F1-derived hybrid tech for the 911 GT3 R Hybrid Power for the two electric motors doesn't come from batteries, but flywheel accumulator technology from Williams Hybrid Power, an offshoot of the Williams Formula 1 team. The flywheel, encased in a carbonfibre safety cell in the space where the passenger seat would be, spins at up to 40,000rpm and acts as a mechanical energy store for the electric motors. Regenerative braking feeds energy back into the flywheel system – no surprises there, as the technology is derived from Williams' exeprience with Kinetic Energy Recovery Systems (KERS) in F1.

Richard Childress of NASCAR celebrates five years of making top-notch wines

Richard Childress didn't know what to expect when he and longtime friend and business partner Greg Johns began planning their small vineyard in central North Carolina in 2003. Childress knows racing--witness his Chevrolet-based teams' 89 major stock-car wins and six NASCAR championships since 1983. But even Childress realized he was a rookie backmarker when he opened Childress Vineyards in October 2004 along Route 52 south of Winston-Salem.

2012 VW Beetle confirmed

2009 VW Beetles - new Beetles will launch in 2012 So what did Stefan Jacoby have to say? What we already knew, really. The next generation Beetle will have more rear leg room than the existing Beetle (as it’s based on the new VW Golf).