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

Car makers to be forced to disclaim ‘Official’ economy figures

We’ve banged on for a long time about the futility of official economy figures, especially as car makers get better and better at ‘gaming’ the official economy tests to produce the results they want. Much of the impetus to create the best headline economy figure for a car is driven by taxation, with car makers well aware that the better the official economy results are, the lower their CO2 will be (CO2 isn’t tested for – it’s just extrapolated from the official mpg) and the more appealing the car will be to buyers, particularly fleet buyers. But a ruling by the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) against Audi could at least see car makers having to admit in their adverts that the ‘official’ economy figure bears no relation to what owners can expect to achieve in the real world.

BMW i3 tops Sunday Times best Electric Cars list

The BMW i3 EV tops Sunday Times best Electric Cars list Just as they did with the new Range Rover last year, the Sunday Times has declared the new BMW i3 EV the pick of the bunch of electric and hybrid cars on sale in the UK, despite the i3 not yet arriving on UK roads. But there seems a good chance that the Sunday Times have got it right this time too, just as they did with the new Range Rover. The Sunday Times praised BMW for biding its time with the launch of their first electric and range-extender car (the next, the BMW i8 supercar, will arrive in 2014) and said the i3′s big appeal lies not in its cutting edge electric motor or battery technology – because there isn’t any – but in its appeal as a car even without its EV powertrain.

Car insurance small print longer than Animal Farm

Aslan Alphan | Getty Images The small print on car insurance policies from a number of leading firms is longer than George Orwell’s novel Animal Farm, according to a consumer website. Fairer Finance waded through the small print of “every” car insurance policy, and found that the policy documents produced by Endsleigh, Sheila’s Wheels, Esure and M&S Bank run to more than 30,000 words. Less than a third read car insurance terms and conditions The highest word count found by researchers came from Endsleigh, with a grand total of 37,674 words in the small print.