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

News watch November 2010: today's auto industry news

Welcome to CAR Magazine's news aggregator as we round up the daily stories in the auto industry. Top tip: news summaries are added from the top hour-by-hour Tuesday 30 November 2010• Fiat and Opel have signed an agreement whereby Fiat will supply vehicles comprising of several variants to Opel, commencing December 1 (Fiat)• Electric cars will make up 20 per cent of UK car sales by 2016, according to National Grid CEO Steve Holiday (Automotive News Europe)• Toyota has said it will repair 650,000 Prius models worldwide because of a fault with the coolant pump (BBC News)• Porsche look likely to succeed in persuading preferred shareholders to support a €5 billion stock sale becuase the deal may offer the chance to buy into Volkswagen at a discount rate (Bloomburg)• China will become Rolls Royce's biggest market, surpassing America as early as 2011 (Automotive News Europe)  Monday 29 November 2010• Bentley has appointd a new CEO to succeed Franz-Josef Paefgen, who's retiring. Porsche R&D director Wolfgang Dürheimer, 52, is now chairman and chief exec of Bentley Motors and Bugatti (Bentley)• In return, Porsche has replaced Dürheimer with Wolfgang Hatz, an internal appointment.

Top Gear Tonight: Burma Road Trip part 2

Top Gear continues its Road Trip across Burma tonight In best Top Gear tradition, series 21 ended up just five episodes long, with last weeks episode being the first part of the Top Gear Christmas Special road trip through Burma. Tonight’s Top Gear – which you can think of as episode 7 of series 21 – is part two of the much delayed 2013 Christmas Special with the boys picking up where they left off last week, heading through Burma on the way to Thailand and the River Kwai. Having got to grips with their less than cutting edge lorries and suffered the Burmese equivalent of truckers’ overnight truck stops, Clarkson, May and Hammond are now heading further in to uncharted territory – certainly for Western Media – as they head towards Thailand and the River Kwai.

Call for reform over road repair funding

FUNDING patterns mean most road maintenance is being carried out in "less-efficient, cold and wet" times, a report from a Government spending watchdog has said. The current pattern of funding, combined with the need to spend money within the financial year, means that most maintenance work goes on between September and March, said the report from the National Audit Office (NAO). It went on: "Although this is less disruptive for road users, it is less efficient than carrying out the work at other times of year because materials can be more difficult to handle in cold and wet conditions, and daylight hours are shorter." The report went on: "As a result of the additional funding for emergency repairs, which is made available at the end of the financial year, almost all highways authorities need extra capacity from the market at the same time, which makes it less likely that they will get value for money." The NAO report said there was a "lack of predictability" over road spending adding that historically, local highway authorities spent more revenue on maintenance, but were now carrying out fewer routine activities such as clearing gullies which are essential to preventing water seeping into roads' sub-structure.