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

Concept Car of the Week: Renault Vel Satis (1998)

The approach to the design of top end models varies greatly depending on the manufacturer's heritage and the cultural differences of each country. It might be a conventional combination of wood and leather for some, power and technology for others, but it is generally packaged into a three-box four-door sedan or two-door fastback. Renault on the other hand had a much more cutting edge vision of what a luxury automobile could be.

MIT develops self-transforming materials that behave 'like robots without robots'

A cross-disciplinary research lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has developed a suite of programmable materials, including carbon fiber, printed wood grain, textile composites, rubbers and plastics, that self-transform when exposed to an external stimulus. Director of the Self-Assembly Lab, Skylar Tibbits, presented a TED talk on 4D printing in 2013, where he demonstrated how a flat sheet of material could effectively build itself when exposed to water, like a robot without a robot. Following positive feedback from industries including aviation, automotive and manufacturing, his lab has been working on developing materials that change according to different activation sources, including heat, light, and air pressure, in addition to water – all of which have automotive relevance.

CPP to buy Browns Lane

CPP are off to Browns Lane - where every E-Type Jaguar was built As regular readers will know, we’re big fans of CPP and are always happy to big them up at the drop of a hat, even before they acquired Vladimir Antonov’s money and set forth on a mission to buy up the world’s niche car makers. So with solid funding from ‘Vlad the Investor’, CPP are on a fast road to being a sizeable force in world car manufacture; not in the volume sense, but certainly in the impact their products are making. Despite pointing out to us that they haven’t actually bought Zagato (technically correct) Zagato is now very much part of the CPP portfolio, as is extreme off-roader Bowler – a more recent acquisition – both solid names to exploit in a high-end car maker future Nirvana.