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

What we drive: 1994 Mazda RX-7 R2

Blame it on the 1993 Montego blue RX-7 parked a block away from my childhood home--and the cover photo of the competition yellow mica R1 gracing one of the other monthly car magazines that year. Either way, it was 1993 when my captivation with the third-generation Mazda RX-7 caught fire. I was 10 years old.

New Hyundai Test Centre at the Nurburgring revealed

Hyundai’s new test centre at the Nurburgring If anyone had said, just a few years ago, that Hyundai would develop a test centre at the Nurburgring to help shake-down their cars, they’d have been laughed at. But Hyundai – and Kia – have come so far in recent years that it makes absolute sense for them to develop a full-time testing facility at the Nurburgring to test their cars for the road, along with just about every other car maker of note. James May may object to the Nurburgring factor in the suspension set-ups of many road cars (and we do have some sympathy for his point of view), but the sometimes extreme nature of the Nurburgring’s surfaces – and its endless twists and turns, uphill and down – do offer car makers an easily accessible place to test cars in the (almost) real world.

Spyker slaps GM with $3 billion lawsuit

Spyker, the Dutch supercar firm and owner of Saab, hit General Motors with a $3 billion lawsuit Monday, claiming GM forced Saab into bankruptcy and interfered with a potential deal with Chinese investors that could have saved the company. Spyker is suing on behalf of Saab, assuming legal costs in exchange for a significant proportion of any potential award. Saab went into bankruptcy in December 2011.