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

Power hike for Porsche Boxster

By Phil McNamara Motor Industry 19 October 2006 02:37 Porsche has upgraded its two Boxster models, by transplanting the Cayman coupe's punchier flat six engines. The base Cayman cabriolet – sorry, Boxster – now gets a smidgen more power and torque from its 2.7-litre unit, with outputs climbing to 245bhp and 201lb ft. The tweaks shave a tenth off the 0-62mph sprint, reducing it to 6.1sec, and improve fuel economy by 1mpg to 30.4.

Chrysler scraps paper owner’s manuals, shifts to DVDs

Chrysler Group is replacing its traditional owner’s manuals with DVDs and an abridged printed guide in an effort to reduce costs and save 930 tons of paper annually. Chrysler will see “substantial savings” from the shift away from paper manuals, which often had more than 500 pages, spokesman Bryan Zvibleman said. He declined to say how much will be saved by the change, which is taking effect with 2010 models.

Ford Mondeo Vignale revealed – it’s back to the days of Ford Ghia

The Ford Mondeo Vignale (picture) has been revealed as Ford’s new range-topper Mainstream car makers have always tried to add some glitz and gloss to their models by tagging on a badge they thought made their cars more exclusive. Like Ford with endless ‘Ghia’ models sitting at the top of the Ford range after they bought Ghia of Turin in 1970. Ford continued to use the Ghia badge to mark out its best-equipped models until very recently (you could still buy a Fiesta Ghia as recently as 2008) but they finally dropped the badge and moved their top of the tree badge over to the ‘Titanium’ moniker.