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

Lotus to invest £500 million to build Esprit, Eterne, Elite & Elan. 1900 new jobs

The new Lotus Esprit Dany Bahar – Lotus boss – revealed plans at last year’s Paris Motor Show to turn Lotus in to an East Anglian Aston Martin. Those plans included one car we knew about – the new Lotus Esprit – and a number we didn’t – the Lotus Eterne, Lotus Elite, Lotus Elan and a new Lotus Elite. But the plans seemed to be nothing more than a wish list, and although it was intimated that Lotus owners Proton were going to provide a war chest of £770 million to fund the development, that later appeared to be an intent to provide Lotus with funds to develop a new range of cars, rather than an actual commitment.

One Lap of the Web: Humvees, abandoned Ferraris and a Volvo collection

We spend a lot of time on the Internet -- pretty much whenever we're not driving, writing about or working on cars. Since there's more out there than we'd ever be able to cover, here's our daily digest of car stuff on the Web you may not otherwise have heard about. -- Auto Blog drives a military Humvee that's fully armored for duty in combat zones, weighing in at 14,400 pounds.

Rumour: Aston Martin One-77 gets canned – or does it?

Aston Martin is really struggling at the moment. Discounts abound (particularly on ’08 model year cars – you can have a V8 Vantage Roadster for not much over £60k, and a DB9 for £75k), and new car sales are as rare as hens teeth. Not surprisingly, there have been deep job cuts, and the dealer network is really struggling to survive.