Acdelco 179-2049 Rear Hold Down Kit on 2040-parts.com

Parents 'risking kids' lives' on defective tyres

MORE THAN 30% of parents are ferrying their most precious cargo around on illegal tyres, a new study has found. Road safety charity TyreSafe has reported that one of its members carried out a study at a Shropshire primary school, where almost a third of the cars dropping children off at school were wearing tyres that were either past their wear markers, were incorrectly inflated, had bulges or cuts, or had foreign objects sticking out of them. “The start of the new academic year means that we will be experiencing many more cars on the roads, particularly at peak times of the day,” comments Stuart Jackson, chairman, TyreSafe.

Ford Fiesta eWheelDrive gets wheel hub electric motors

The Ford Fiesta eWheelDrive – a driveable research vehicle built by Ford and German specialists Schaeffler – may be a regular supermini in size, but it points towards a potential future EV which is much more compact and very manoeuvrable. Ford has taken a regular Fiesta and dumped its powertrain, replacing it with a battery bank where the engine would be and fitted a pair of in-hub electric motors on the rear wheels. But the plan is to build new cars with the batteries under the floor which frees up the space under the bonnet which can then be all but removed to create a very compact urban car that still has space for four.

Tata Pixel (2011) at Geneva motor show

Tata develops the Nano for European tastes with the new Pixel city car concept, unveiled at the 2011 Geneva motor show. Tata? So it's a basic car for the developing world, rough edges and all?