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

Early cars, fashion on display at the Petersen

Automotivated, a new exhibit at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles, traces the evolution of clothes worn in cars--from the bulky circus-tent stuff people had to wear to keep from freezing to death in the jangly, open-topped conveyances of 100 years ago, up to the height of the European Concours in the 1920s and '30s, when what you and your date wore was just as important to winning best of show as the styling of your Delahaye/Delage/Talbot Lago. “In the earliest days of the automobile, you were sitting on the car, you weren't sitting in it,” said Leslie Kendall, curator at the Petersen. So the first section of the exhibit shows people (mannequins dressed as people) in heavy, practical overcoats, scarves and goggles.

McLaren P1: Paris 2012

The McLaren P1 – spiritual successor to the iconic McLaren F1 – has been publicly revealed at the 2012 Paris Motor Show. Still, we do have more details on the P1 concept that McLaren say will turn in to a production car in 2013 before it finds its way in to the garages of wealthy McLaren customers in 2014. The McLaren P1 is designed to be “…the best driver’s car in the world on road and track” according to McLaren, which is setting the bar a bit higher than high, and the concept P1 at Paris is – at least in terms of what we can see – 95 per cent of what the production model will be.

Subaru Forester tops small SUVs in new crash test

The Subaru Forester and Mitsubishi Outlander Sport have won top honors from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, becoming the only small SUVs to ace the group's new "small overlap" crash test. The Forester, which Subaru redesigned for the 2014 model year, earned Top Safety Pick+ accolades by scoring a "good" rating on the small overlap test, in which the front corner of the vehicle on the driver's side strikes a five-foot-tall barrier at 40 mph. "With the redesigned Forester, Subaru's engineers set out to do well in our new test, and they succeeded," Joe Nolan, vice president for vehicle research at IIHS, said in a statement.