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

Exotics get sideways at Monticello's 'Drift With the Supercars'

Monticello Motor Club president Ari Straus and his PR guy, Roger Garbow, were brainstorming in early October and came up with what initially sounded like a crazy idea: Bring a bunch of supercars to the track for a day of drifting. "Beer was involved," says Garbow, in an attempt to rationalize the insanity of the concept. The next day, the two decided it was still a crazy idea.

Spyker stretches the C8 Laviolette to make the Spyker C8 Aileron

But those problems faded last year when Spyker got solid investment from a Russian banker. Which means Spyker can once more push forward after a period of struggle, although what impact the crisis engulfing the car market in general will have is anybody’s guess. Spyker C8 Aileron - a stretched C8 Laviolette We had half expected the story at Geneva for Spyker to be the reveal of the Spyker SUV – the Spyker D12 Peking-Paris – in something close to production ready state.

Video: Jaguar's Julian Thomson on the importance of design values

Jaguar's Head of Advanced Design, Julian Thomson, appeared at this month's PSFK Conference in London giving a talk on design values. Thomson's talk, ‘Concepting Dreams, Making Reality Happen', dealt with questions of creating a design story as well as how Jaguar uses the value of its heritage while keeping things original and new. Thomson – the man behind the 2010 C-X75 and the recently revealed F-Type – said, "You can't get a good design story if you don't look at your heritage, where you came from, where your values came from." He went on to discuss the ‘sad years of Jaguar', from around 1968 to 2004 where Jaguar was too timid to develop and "essentially made the same-looking car." He put this down to a reluctance on Jaguar's part to move too far away from its successful models and, quite interestingly, because "not only did we start doing market research, we started asking Americans what they wanted." Watch the full video on the left.