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

Toyota to unlock secrets of black-box recorders

Reacting to criticism that data from black-box crash recorders in its vehicles can be accessed only by the company, Toyota Motor Corp. is moving to ship hundreds of data-decoding machines to the United States and make them commercially available to help diagnose vehicle problems. The devices, known as event data recorders, are similar to the black boxes on airliners and record information such as vehicle and engine speed in the seconds before a crash.

VW to unveil Beetle Dune concept at Detroit Auto Show

The jury is out as to whether Volkswagen's Beetle Dune concept is more Frank Herbert or Bruce Meyers. Equipped with all mod cons, it’s a far cry from the simple, tough desert-race-inspired Bugs that popped up like aggro sandworms during the 1970s. On the other hand, it's still got four gasoline-burning cylinders and two-wheel drive.

Audi RS5 TDI Concept gets electric turbo and 380bhp

The Audi RS5 TDI Concept (pictured) gets an electric turbo It’s two years since Audi revealed it was working on an electric turbo to be used in a twin-turbo setup, with the electric turbo able to offer boost pressure from much lower down the rev range than a normal turbo. That has turned in to the Audi RS5 TDI Concept, where Audi has replaced the normal RS5‘s V8 with a 3.0 litre TDI engine with a small electric turbo for low rev work and a bigger turbo to do the higher rev stuff. The electric turbo works from the off to provide maximum torque of 553lb/ft from just 1250rpm, before the bigger normal turbo takes over at 3,000rpm to continue the boost.