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

Fuel Duty frozen and car tax discs scrapped

Fuel Duty frozen and car tax discs scrapped Fuel duty makes up a painful chunk of the price of petrol and diesel, and it was due to be increased again next September. But Chancellor George Osborne has announced that the tax hike will be scrapped – as has been the case every year sicne the Con-Dems came to power – saving motorists an additional 2p on a litre of fuel. It may not be a price cut, but at least it’s not going up.

First Sight: Mercedes-Benz SL

The new high-tech, low weight Mercedes SL roadster receives its official global unveil next week in Detroit but Car Design News got an early peek of the final production car and had a chat with its designers at Mercedes' US advanced design studio in Carlsbad, California back in November. "We want to get back to clean, long-lasting design," director of Mercedes global advanced design and SL project leader, Steffen Kohl told CDN at the exclusive preview of the sixth-generation model. "So the new SL is long, sleek and still full of tension in the feature lines but less wedgy." In a short presentation Kohl felt all SLs became successfully iconic in their times because they followed two key rules – ‘sensuality' and ‘cleanness' – but alluded that the first rule may have been lost in more recent eras.

McLaren 12C production ends – killed off by the new 650S

The McLaren 12C bites the dusts – killed off by the new 650S When the new McLaren 650S was revealed in February, we commented that we expected the McLaren 12C to quietly disappear. And it has. To start with McLaren simply halted production of the 12C to concentrate on building the new 650S, but now they say it won’t be restarted as the McLaren range ‘evolves’.