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

Next generation MINI Countryman to arrive in 2016

The next generation MINI Countryman to arrive in 2016 (current model pictured) We’ve recently had the arrival of the all new MINI, and the next year or so will see the roll-out of a succession of takes on the new MINI. But that process of building a MINI for every possible niche won’t complete until the MINI Countryman (and its coupe sibling, the MINI Paceman) are replaced. That now looks likely to happen in 2016 as, according to Automotive News, BMW is to end production of the MINI Countryman and Paceman at Magna Steyr in Austria in 2016 and move production of the Countryman and Paceman to Oxford and the new MINI Plant in the Netherlands.

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.

Drivers 'not always watching road'

MOTORISTS typically have their eyes off the road for a tenth of the time they are driving, a study has shown. For 10% of their journey they are eating, reaching for the phone, texting or engaged in other activities that cause concentration to wander away from what is happening beyond the windscreen. Predictably, teenagers who had recently passed their test were most likely to crash or experience a near-miss as a result of being distracted, according to US researchers.