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

SEMA Pasadena: Public show in SoCal raises money for charity

Though we weren't at the very first SEMA show 42 years ago at the National Guard Armory in Los Angeles, the inaugural SEMA Cares Show and Shine last weekend must have been a lot like that first show four decades ago. SEMA Cares was held in the Pasadena Convention Center in Southern California. Organizers sold out all 155 spots for cool cars and all 25 booth spaces for vendors.

One lap of the Web: microcars and muscle cars

-- Remember the 1986 Pontiac Grand Prix 2+2? Yes, the one that you can't find anywhere now outside of those amazingly outdated posters (where do they find them?) they have on the walls of your local oil change place, right next to a poster of a GMC Syclone and a first-generation Dodge Viper? The one with the plastic nosecone that inevitably gets warped?

Jaguar hybrid cars due in 2013-14

Jaguar will launch its own hybrid vehicles soon after Land Rover, CAR can confirm. Parent company Jaguar Land Rover is developing battery-assisted hybrid versions for both brands but its strategy puts part-electric Land Rovers first on the launchpad in 2013.Hybrid Jaguars – set to include the XJ and XF, but eventually every model – are therefore likely to be on the market by 2013-2014, using a similar eight-speed ZF hybrid transmission to petrol-electric BMWs.The staggered roll-out of battery Jags and Land Rovers makes sense: heavy 4x4s have come in the firing line from green protestors who label them Chelsea Tractors. Hybrid Land Rovers will trim emissions and – in plug-in hybrid mode – enable even big bulky Range Rovers to drive in zero-emissions mode into central urban areas emitting nothing more unsaintly than an electric whir.So which Jaguars will go hybrid first?It's likely that the largest models such as the XJ will receive the hybrid power packs first; large cars reap the greater benefit and can more easily swallow the additional cost, put at around £10,000 in today's money.JLR's Midlands engineering bases in Whitley and Gaydon now employ 100 engineers in the expanding hybrid powertrain business unit launched 18 months ago.