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

1975 JC Whitney catalog: A bonanza of aftermarket Volkswagen goodies

Back before there was the Internet, or even big car-parts chain stores, there was the JC Whitney catalog. Printed on cheap, pulpy paper and featuring tens of thousands of tiny, hand-drawn illustrations, these thick books gave me many hours of enjoyment in the early 1980s, as I fantasized about how I'd modify my incredibly sketchy and hooptified '58 Beetle. Now I've picked up a 1975 JC Whitney catalog, and the Volkswagen section is even better than I remembered!

Ford Focus at the Detroit motor show 2010

Welcome to what will undoubtedly prove to be a very familiar sight in the coming years: the new 2010 Ford Focus. Unveiled as a world car at the 2010 North American International Auto Show, the new Mk3 Ford Focus is easily one of the biggest launches in Detroit.So the new Mk3 Ford Focus is going global?You betcha. This one will follow the Fiesta across the Pond to America, giving the Focus a footprint from Dagenham to Detroit and beyond.

New Hyundai Test Centre at the Nurburgring revealed

Hyundai’s new test centre at the Nurburgring If anyone had said, just a few years ago, that Hyundai would develop a test centre at the Nurburgring to help shake-down their cars, they’d have been laughed at. But Hyundai – and Kia – have come so far in recent years that it makes absolute sense for them to develop a full-time testing facility at the Nurburgring to test their cars for the road, along with just about every other car maker of note. James May may object to the Nurburgring factor in the suspension set-ups of many road cars (and we do have some sympathy for his point of view), but the sometimes extreme nature of the Nurburgring’s surfaces – and its endless twists and turns, uphill and down – do offer car makers an easily accessible place to test cars in the (almost) real world.