94-97 Honda Accord Washer Tank on 2040-parts.com

Alfa Romeo goes rear-drive; eight new cars by 2018 including 4C Cloverleaf

By Damion Smy Motor Industry 06 May 2014 15:51 Alfa Romeo has confirmed the news first broken exclusively by CAR in July 2013: the Italian brand will make a dramatic shift from front-drive hatches like the Mito and Giulietta, and instead develop a new range of rear- and all-wheel sports saloons, SUVs and sports cars. Announced in Detroit at Fiat-Chrysler HQ, Alfa Romeo chief technology officer Harald Wester revealed the mantra for the brand includes pushing volumes up from 74,000 sales in 2013, to around 400,000 by 2018. Alfa Romeo is investing around €5bn in the project, the first fruits of which will be the new Giulia saloon, a 3-series rival that will go on sale in autumn 2015.Read our scoop of Alfa's strategy here That’s right.

New Mercedes A Class recalled for faulty air bag

The new Mercedes A Class is being recalled for an Airbag fault The new Mercedes A Class is a cracking little car, and offers much more style, performance and joy than the boxy little original A Class. On the market for less than a year, the new A Class has been a big success story for Mercedes-Benz with 100,000 orders on its books by the end of 2012 as buyers fell for the appeal of MB’s first really credible compact car. And that appeal was wide, with everything from frugal diesels to the range-topping A45 AMG, which offers the promise of not just stunning performance from its 335bhp, but decent economy and practicality when you’re not in the mood to blat.

One Lap of the Web: The Talented Mr. Honda, electric airplanes and Viper-powered Jensens

We spend a lot of time on the Internet -- pretty much whenever we're not driving, writing about or working on cars. Since there's more out there than we'd ever be able to cover, here's our daily digest of car stuff on the Web you may not otherwise have heard about. -- A blog post at Hemmings called our attention to this fascinating profile of Soichiro Honda, which was originally printed in the June 16, 1963 edition of the British newspaper The Observer.