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

F1 goes all arty with oil: Lewis Hamilton portrait

By Peter Adams Motoring Issues 08 June 2009 14:00 It’s not often that the motoring world slickly merges with art, but Mobil 1 has made it happen. US artist David Macaluso has painted a portrait of Lewis Hamilton using oil not from a tube of paint, but from the sump of Hamilton’s F1 car. The oil was taken from Vodafone McLaren Mercedes’ 2008 F1 car – the vehicle that took Hamilton to the world championship last year.

New Hyundai Test Centre at the Nurburgring revealed

Hyundai’s new test centre at the Nurburgring If anyone had said, just a few years ago, that Hyundai would develop a test centre at the Nurburgring to help shake-down their cars, they’d have been laughed at. But Hyundai – and Kia – have come so far in recent years that it makes absolute sense for them to develop a full-time testing facility at the Nurburgring to test their cars for the road, along with just about every other car maker of note. James May may object to the Nurburgring factor in the suspension set-ups of many road cars (and we do have some sympathy for his point of view), but the sometimes extreme nature of the Nurburgring’s surfaces – and its endless twists and turns, uphill and down – do offer car makers an easily accessible place to test cars in the (almost) real world.

Skoda MissionL concept car (2011) unveiled

Skoda will show this new MissionL concept car at the 2011 Frankfurt motor show. It's a clear look at its proposed new model to slot between Fabia and Octavia. If you ever wondered at the strange 'half sizes' used by the Czechs, this is why.