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

Jaguar: Four-wheel drive a priority. Hybrid Jaguars not.

Our long term Jaguar XJ would have been better in the snow with 4WD - but it's coming We’ve been talking about a four-wheel drive platform for Jaguars for a long time now. As far back as 2009, Jaguar privately confessed that the lack of an XF Estate was down to the lack of a 4WD platform to make the XF Estate a proper competitor in the luxury load-lugging market. And although we thought Jaguar could still make a success of the XF Estate without a 4WD option, we understood their perspective; Jaguar didn’t want to be the poor relation in the luxury estate market.

Spyker production starts at CPP

Councillor Ken Taylor (leader Coventry City Council), Brendan O’Toole and Victor Muller. Actually, even without the caption, we reckon you could have worked out who's who. A few months ago we reported that Spyker were moving production of their cars to the UK, in to the very capable hands of CPP Manufacturing, a Coventry-based specialist company already responsible for making most of what goes in to a Spyker.

BMW/Exa-sponsored project at ACCD

Art Center's BMW/Exa 7th term sponsored project, which we first reported on back in mid-February, recently had its final presentation at the conclusion of the Spring 2008 term. You'll recall the project tasked the students with redesigning a future X5 Sports Activity Vehicle with the express mandate improving its aerodynamic efficiency by at least 30 percent. To achieve this lofty goal, the co-sponsor on the project, Exa Corporation was going to provide both their engineering software PowerFLOW and their technical know-how to virtually test the students' Alias StudioTools design models and provide them with real world aerodynamic feedback.