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

The UK’s best-selling car is… a toy car

Forget the Ford Fiesta. With 2012 sales of a ‘mere’ 109,625, it has to relinquish its best-selling status to this young gun – the Cozy Coupe. The ever-popular children's toy, littering many a hallway across the land, sold around 143,000 in 2012.

Contest: Volkswagen Slipstream wins 2007 LA Design Challenge

Volkswagen's Slipstream concept has won the fourth annual Design Challenge competition, part of the Design Los Angeles automobile designer's conference. The award was presented during the second press day of the 2007 Los Angeles Auto Show.  The theme of this year's competition, RoboCar of 2057, asked eight automotive design studios in California to form their vision of the future by depicting a vehicle that incorporates artificial intelligence engineered to make life easier and more attractive to consumers 50 years from now. Designers entered two-dimensional renderings and concept descriptions predicting how the rapidly advancing field of artificial intelligence will integrate into the automobile to make life safer, more practical and attractive, and the entries were judged by multi-discipline design professionals who selected the winner based on its originality of creative concept, integration of robotics and level of adaptation to a variety of environmental conditions and consumer needs.

Used car sales return to pre-recession levels

As the UK’s buoyant new car sales figures continue to buck the European trend, it was only a matter of time before this had a positive knock-on effect on sales of used cars. Now, according to figures released in the latest BCA Used Car Market Report, used car sales hit 7.1 million last year, outpacing new car sales by 6.4% and, even more crucially, returning to pre-recession levels. Best used car buys for 2013 On Bing: see pictures of used cars In fact, a record £38.1 billion worth of used cars were sold in 2012, £5.8 billion more than was spent on new cars.