Arias Pistons 12.5:1 Compression 82mm Bore Honda B-series on 2040-parts.com

Nissan Friend-ME – looks better than it sounds: Shanghia Motor Show

Nissan has built the Friend-ME (which must rank as one of the most useless car monikers ever) to appeal to the potentially huge market of ‘B?línghòu’ buyers, a group of buyers, born in the 1980s, who grew up as single children thanks to China’s ‘One Child’ policy. Nissan sees this group as totally reliant on their network of friends for support, and has built a car that owners can enjoy with their friends on an equal basis. So every one of the four seats gets full instrumentation - SatNav, Fuel, Speed – and an ‘Oracle Stone’ runs down the centre of the cabin which can display whatever content the occupants want from their connected Smartphones and tablets.

Mercedes-Benz to cut production time, halve number of vehicle architectures

Mercedes-Benz is restructuring its global production network to cut the average production time for its models to 30 hours by 2015 from 43 in 2008. "We have increased productivity by 2 percent a year over the last few years. We will be accelerating our productivity efforts," Mercedes production boss Wolfgang Bernhard said during an investor conference that was part of the automaker's plant opening in Kecskemet, Hungary, on Thursday.

One Lap of the Web: Cool classic concepts, Rat Pack Cadillacs and even more Vin Diesel

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. -- Petrolicious brings us an awesome VWvortex forum thread packed with prototype photos, design proposals and concept sketches of everything from the Iso Grifo to the 1994 Mustang.