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

Ellesmere Port's bid to build Ampera hits snags

By Rob Golding Motor Industry 09 October 2009 15:02 Prime minister Gordon Brown’s personal crusade to get Vauxhall's version of the Chevrolet Volt petrol-electric plug-in hybrid – the Ampera – built in Britain's Ellesmere Port factory in 2012 is a dream delayed, CAR can disclose today.News that the UK Astra plant is the best in Europe, that the Astra's Delta platform will underpin the Ampera, and that Volt will be on US sale from 2010 had been taken to mean that Vauxhall would be churning out the cars in the north west within three years.But the prospect of an electric car industry growing up around the run-down Merseyside manufacturing site is not imminent, CAR has learned.'No Ampera to be built in Europe before 2015'Vauxhall insiders have made it clear that the car to be known as the Vauxhall/Opel Ampera in Europe will be an import from the US for at least five years. One senior planner told us: 'The US will be the sole source of Amperas until at least 2015.'Bob Lutz, GM's former product supremo who recently came out of retirement as a PR, said that the low value of the dollar made the US an ideal site for the manufacturing of export cars. And with forecast sticker prices of the range-extender electric car standing at a scary £35,000+, every price saving is vital to its marketability.The European market also needs time to get its electricity recharge infrastructure in place before it is worth making cars onshore in volume, GM high-ups point out.

Skoda Yeti ready to launch

The Skoda Yeti open pick-up concept from 2005 Back in 2005, Skoda revealed a small, urban concept called the Skoda Yeti. Based on the then Golf platform, it was designed to be a non-aggressive, practical and fashion-conscience urban SUV. The original concept was shown at Geneva in 2005, with an updated concept, featuring an open pick-up, showing at Frankfurt later the same year.

rusEFI: Open-source homebuilt fuel-injection set to rival Megasquirt

Electronic fuel-delivery and ignition controls have given us a new golden age of engine efficiency and performance. Most of us would never go back to the dark ages—say, before 1990—when you could still buy new vehicles with carburetors and clunky distributors. From the point of view of those of us who like to modify our cars, however, the black-box nature of engine-control computers limits our options for making changes to how our fuel-delivery and ignition systems function.