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

Transmissions gone wild!

If you've been car shopping recently, or just paying attention to Autoweek car reviews, you've noticed that the six-speed automatic -- de rigueur as recently as a year ago -- suddenly has ratio envy. The new hotness? Eight- and nine-speed automatic transmissions.

Bluebird Electric aiming for UK Land Speed Record

Bluebird Electric You’d hope that anyone of any age would associate ‘Bluebird’ with ‘Campbell’, but as many of our schools don’t seem too keen on anything that may be even remotely considered part of Britain’s history, perhaps not. So we’ll just throw in that Sir Malcolm Campbell drove a variety of Bluebird (or Blue Bird) cars to new land speed records on Pendine Sands in the 1920s and his son, Donald Campbell, matched his father’s achievements with world speed records on both land and water – the only man to have held land and water speed records at the same time. And he too used the Bluebird moniker for his record-breaking transport of choice. Fast forward the best part of fifty years and it’s the grandson of Sir Malcolm – Don Wales – who’s plotting to take the Bluebird Electric to a new UK Land Speed Record, and planning to make a start on that quest at Pendine Sands (a location Top Gear fans will probably recognise – and was it Pendine Sands on the new Torchwood series last week?).

Jaguar SUV/Crossover (C-X17) gets another outing with another new paint job

Jaguar SUV/Crossover (C-X17) gets another outing – this time in Italian Racing Red The Jaguar SUV Crossover arrived at the Frankfurt Motor Show last year as a ‘Concept’, although it’s clear Jaguar has plans to make it a production reality. That was given more credence with a new version of the Jaguar SUV arriving at the Dubai Motor Show in November with an all new Liquid Metal paint job (that looked better than the debut car’s Jaguar Racing Blue car) and an outing for the C-X17 at the Guangzhou Motor Show with a gold paint job as Jaguar continued to garner feedback for their SUV/Crossover plans. Now Jaguar has arrived at the Brussels Motor Show with yet another colour take on the C-X17 – this time Italian Racing Red – although, as far as we can tell, there are no other changes to the C-X17 from the original car’s appearance.