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

VW Design Vision GTI gets 500bhp: Worthersee

The Design Vision GTI is built to show what a Golf built for racing would look like – and perhaps point to future evolutions of VW’s most successful car – and is built on the same MQB platform as the regular GTI. It’s a bit shorter (15mm) than a regular Golf, a chunk wider (71mm) and a lot lower (57mm) which conspires to make the Design Vision GTI much more aggressive looking than its mainstream sibling. Power comes from a 3.0 litre V6 with two turbos – good for 500bhp and 413lb/ft of torque – which is driven to all four wheels through a DSG ‘box and can scoot to 62mph in a supercar-like 3.9 seconds on its way to 186mph.

MG6 – A new MG shows at Shanghai

The new MG6 is unveiled at Shanghai - coming to the UK in 2010 SAIC bought the rights to Rover when Rover fell apart after its sale by BMW for £10. But they didn’t secure all the rights to the ‘Rover’ name, so we won’t be seeing new Rovers by name, but instead we are to get a Rover 75 based MG – the first new MG launch since the ZS and ZT in 2001. Yesterday SAIC unveiled the new MG6, a sport hatchback based on the Rowe 550 (which is itself based on a shortened wheelbase Rover 75) and its destined to come to the UK next year.

Toyota and Mercedes-Benz are top global car brands

Toyota & Mercedes-Benz are the Top Global Automotive Brands 2011 Interbrand, a branding consultancy, delivers a report on the world’s brands every year, and in 2011, despite recall woes and the devastation of the Japanese Tsunami, Toyota leads the automotive brands, with luxury car maker Mercedes-Benz just behind. Interbrand uses three measures to gauge how effective a brand is – performance of branded product, the brands ability to secure earnings and the role of the brand in purchasing decisions – to come up with a chart of the top 100 world brands. At the top of the tree are companies like Coca Cola, IBM, Microsoft and Google, but car brands do well with Toyota, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Honda, VW, and Ford all making it in to the top 50.