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

Car Design China Award winner benefits from Umeå placement

One of this year's Car Design China Award winners won the prize of a visit to Sweden's Umeå Institute of Design to mix with and work alongside other young aspiring designers and learn new skills using some of the latest technology available. Tsinghua University's Yulian Wu, who won the award for Best Luxury Concept along with partner Liu Kefeng at this year's awards, was welcomed to the school when he arrived on 25 September with the traditional welcome party for all new students. Umeå's program director for Transportation Design Demian Horst's first impression of Wu was a positive one.

Ellesmere Port's bid to build Ampera hits snags

By Rob Golding Motor Industry 09 October 2009 15:02 Prime minister Gordon Brown’s personal crusade to get Vauxhall's version of the Chevrolet Volt petrol-electric plug-in hybrid – the Ampera – built in Britain's Ellesmere Port factory in 2012 is a dream delayed, CAR can disclose today.News that the UK Astra plant is the best in Europe, that the Astra's Delta platform will underpin the Ampera, and that Volt will be on US sale from 2010 had been taken to mean that Vauxhall would be churning out the cars in the north west within three years.But the prospect of an electric car industry growing up around the run-down Merseyside manufacturing site is not imminent, CAR has learned.'No Ampera to be built in Europe before 2015'Vauxhall insiders have made it clear that the car to be known as the Vauxhall/Opel Ampera in Europe will be an import from the US for at least five years. One senior planner told us: 'The US will be the sole source of Amperas until at least 2015.'Bob Lutz, GM's former product supremo who recently came out of retirement as a PR, said that the low value of the dollar made the US an ideal site for the manufacturing of export cars. And with forecast sticker prices of the range-extender electric car standing at a scary £35,000+, every price saving is vital to its marketability.The European market also needs time to get its electricity recharge infrastructure in place before it is worth making cars onshore in volume, GM high-ups point out.

Volvo Concept Estate previews upcoming V90 wagon

We flipped over the Volvo Concept Coupe at Frankfurt. We praised the XC Concept Coupe at Detroit. But the Volvo Concept Estate is the member of Volvo's recent show trio that finally reduced us to a large petri dish's worth of gibberish-spouting goo.