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

Interior Motives Design Conference 2006

A warm and sunny London was the venue for the second Design Conference organised by the UK-based magazine Interior Motives. The conference took place June 7-8 at the Museum in Docklands near Canary Wharf in the heart of the revitalized docklands area to the east of London and was enjoyed by around one hundred delegates from the international automotive design community.The two-day summit was chaired by educators from two design schools, as a way of deliberately promoting neutral yet informed discussions from the panel. Matteo Conti, Programme Leader of Transportation Design at Northumbria University introduced the speakers on the first day, while on day two Dave Muyres and Geoff Wardle from Art Center College of Design jointly chaired the session.

Toyota: Runaway Prius accounts ‘inconsistent' with testing

Toyota is challenging the accounts of a motorist whose Prius sped out of control last week in San Diego, calling his reports of the incident “inconsistent” with the initial findings of the company. Toyota released the results after two days of testing on a 2008 Prius hybrid that sped out of control last week in California, and it maintained that the car's brakes and throttle functioned properly. The now-infamous incident occurred on March 8, when a Prius driven by James Sikes was reported in a 911 call to be speeding uncontrollably.

Audi RS5 TDI Concept gets electric turbo and 380bhp

The Audi RS5 TDI Concept (pictured) gets an electric turbo It’s two years since Audi revealed it was working on an electric turbo to be used in a twin-turbo setup, with the electric turbo able to offer boost pressure from much lower down the rev range than a normal turbo. That has turned in to the Audi RS5 TDI Concept, where Audi has replaced the normal RS5‘s V8 with a 3.0 litre TDI engine with a small electric turbo for low rev work and a bigger turbo to do the higher rev stuff. The electric turbo works from the off to provide maximum torque of 553lb/ft from just 1250rpm, before the bigger normal turbo takes over at 3,000rpm to continue the boost.