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

2012 Mazda3 Facelift arrives in the UK. Price from £13,495

The 2012 Mazda3 arrives in the UK The 2012 Mazda3 Facelift arrives in the UK this month with minor tweaks and a starting price of £13,495. The Mazda3 is a car you can easily overlook when scouring the market for a compact family car, which is a shame. It’s a good car and, with the facelift for 2012 chucking in a few tweaks, is more appealing than before.

BMW Z4M? Sorry, it’s the Z4 M-Sport

BMW are testing a Z4 with an M-Sport package round the Nurburgring I suppose that at least this way you can have a Z4 that looks the part- with bigger wheels and bumpers and maybe even a suspension tweak or three – without having to bother with the big price ticket or the not inconsiderable running costs. To be fair, the Z4 sDrive35i is not particularly slow. It will manage to get to 60 mph in around 5.0 seconds; handles well and looks so much better than the Z3 did.

New Vauxhall Astra Sports Tourer (2011) Revealed

The Vauxhall Astra ST 2011 You can’t have a new Vauxhall Astra without a new Astra Estate, so Vauxhall has now got round to revealing the Vauxhall Astra Sports Tourer, which will go on sale at the end of the year and be built at Vauxhall’s plant in Ellesmere Port. Vauxhall has done a good job of making a load-lugger from the stylish Astra. The wheelbase remains the same but the load length grows by 28mm, not a huge amount but enough to give the Astra ST 500 litres of load space with the seats up and 1550 litres with them down.