C5 Chevy Corvette Washer Fluid Bottle Sensor 97 98 99 on 2040-parts.com

GM to slash global vehicle platforms by more than half, to 14, by 2018

General Motors says it will cut the number of vehicle platforms it uses globally by more than half over the next decade, in a bid to reduce complexity and save on product-development costs. “More of our components will be common, and more of our vehicles will be on global architectures,” GM CEO Dan Akerson told analysts on Tuesday. His remarks came as GM kicked off a series of presentations online, billed as its 2011 Global Business Conference.

BMW i8 heading up the Goodwood Hillcimb in June

The BMW i8 is heading up the Goodwood Hillclimb The Honda NSX won’t be the only green supercar heading up the hillcimb at the Goodwood Festival of Speed in June – the new BMW i8 hybrid supercar will be too. BMW has announced that the i8 will be seen in action in the UK for the first time at the end of June when it too takes on the 1.16 mile Goodwood Hillcimb during the 2014 Festival of Speed. It’ll be the first time we get to see just how capable the i8 is, and even with a paltry 1.5 litre 3-cylinder engine it promises impressive performance as that little 3-pot churns out 228bhp oin its own and 356bhp when its electric motor joins in.

Audi shows S3 Sportback (2013) – but is a used S3 a better buy?

Here’s Audi’s S3 Sportback, the five-door version of the 296bhp Quattro hot hatch unveiled last year. The S3 Sportback takes 5sec flat to accelerate from 0 to 62mph, that’s one-tenth of a second quicker than Audi’s official figure for its three-door stablemate. That’s because the initial 5.1sec S3 time was only an estimate, and Audi’s subsequent tests have shown the three-door S3 actually dipping below five seconds in the 0-62mph sprint.