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

Honda Civic Tourer 1.6 i-DTEC wins MPG Marathon

The winners of the MPG Marathon in the Honda Civic Tourer 1.6 i-DTEC Last year Honda took the CR-V 1.6i-DTEC out MPG Marathon playing, and managed to return an impressive 78mpg in a car the official figures say should do 63mpg, disproving (to a point) that cars just can’t achieve official economy figures in the real world. This time it’s the turn of the new Honda Civic Tourer with the latest 1.6 i-DTEC ‘Earth Dreams’ engine to go out and eke every possible inch of tarmac from every single drop of petrol. In the hands of Honda R&D engineers Fergal McGrath, James Warren, Tony Shiggins and Julian Warren, the Civic Tourer drove a total of 330 miles and managed to do 97.2mpg – an impressive 31.8 per cent more than the official average.

Build your Mini Cooper Hardtop

We suspect that your initial inclination upon the discovery of a new model's configurator is to throw gobs and gobs of equipment at a car to see just how high the price will go. After all, that's what we tend to do. It's especially satisfying with German automakers — notably Porsche and BMW — who seem to have turned option pricing into something bordering on absurdist theatre.

Volvo V60 diesel plug-in hybrid – again

Volvo V60 Plug-in Diesel Hybrid Last month we reported on the innovative Volvo V60 diesel plug-in hybrid, a proper advance in hybrid gubbins which Volvo are planning on revealing – in practically production-ready form – at next weeks Geneva Motor Show. We first reported Volvo’s intention to bring a diesel hybrid to market by 2012 back in 2009, and the story we ran at the end of January was confirmation of that. But now Volvo has churned out a chunky press release to tell us exactly what the V60 plug-in hybrid will offer, so we thought we ought to revisit this story one more time before Geneva.