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

Demise of kei cars on the horizon?

The kei car has long been a staple of the Japanese automobile industry and its car culture. Too diminutive for Western markets, the tiny cars and trucks are a strong influencer of design in Japan. Now, as The New York Times reports, the Japanese government has hit kei cars with increases in sales tax, gasoline prices and has reduced the kei car tax break introduced to make the cars popular in the first place by 50 percent.

Future products: Mazda's new direct-injection engine family arrives in 2011

The big news at Mazda is a new family of direct-injection gasoline and diesel engines that will start to arrive in 2011. Mazda will make significant changes to vehicle platforms to accommodate the Sky engines, which will be more powerful and fuel-efficient at lower displacements than the company's current engines. The first Sky gasoline engine is expected to debut in the United States in 2011.

Audi A2 electric concept heads for Frankfurt

Audi A2 Concept EV - Frankfurt bound The last Audi A2 was perhaps the only real failure for Audi in the last twenty years. But that hasn’t stopped them reviving the moniker and attaching it to a new concept heading to Frankfurt – the electric Audi A2 Concept. Audi say the A2 concept has an electric-only powertrain, which sadly means they are not pursuing the elegant range-extender solution with a Wankel engine they showed in the A1 e-Tron at Geneva last year.