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

Ford puts Volvo up for sale

Having spent most of the last twenty years carefully building up a portfolio of Prestige European car makers, including Jaguar, Land Rover, Aston Martin and Volvo, the last of these, Volvo, has now been put up for sale by Ford. This hardly comes as a surprise when you see the precarious state of Ford. It’s busy going cap-in-hand to the US government looking for a bail out, and selling off Volvo could add several hundred million pounds to its decimated balance sheet.

BMW are rolling out their ‘BMW Genius’ programme across UK dealers

Even when you’re immersed in the latest car news day in and day out, it’s often quite tough to keep up with the new technologies car makers are offering, so many buyers must struggle to know exactly what their options are. That should be a job for the car salesman, but most car salesmen only worry about explaining how good the deal is and how it’s better than any other deal, so buyers often come away with a car that doesn’t fit their needs as well as it could. But with fewer new car buyers really wrapped up in performance and dynamics and more interested in the tech behind the wheels, BMW has been trying out an idea borrowed from Apple Stores by employing ’BMW Geniuses’ at 10 of their UK dealerships to explain the advantages of much of their technology to customers.

Congress scales back tax break for car buyers

A proposed tax break for new-vehicle buyers is dramatically scaled back in the final version of the economic stimulus bill. Auto dealers and their allies had sought to make interest on auto loans and the sales and excise taxes on new-vehicle purchases deductible from federal taxes. Proponents say those measures are needed to boost showroom traffic and sales.