Chrysler 2.4l A/c Compressor on 2040-parts.com

Honda and Acura to extend incentives on out-of-stock vehicles

Honda has told its U.S. dealers to honor discount offers on models that aren't in stock in a bid to keep customers from buying from rivals as the automaker copes with shortages caused by the March earthquake and tsunami in Japan. The new program is called the Honda Promise, according to news-service reports.

Porsche 911 GT3 R Hybrid (2011) first official pictures

Porsche has released details of its updated 911 GT3 R Hybrid – the 2010 original nearly won last year's Nurburgring 24hr race before (ironically) it retired with petrol engine failure.  The 2011 Porsche 911 GT3 R Hybrid – the lowdown Before this report disappears in a chorus of ‘it looks the same as last year’s one’, let's outline where Porsche’s engineers have been busy. At the unfashionable end of the car remains a 4.0-litre flat-six engine producing approximately 470bhp. Up front are twin electric motors, now producing 75kW of power each (up from 60kW) and combined these give the GT3 R Hybrid a 197bhp electric boost, which can be programmed to activate automatically via the throttle pedal, or manually selected during overtaking. F1-derived hybrid tech for the 911 GT3 R Hybrid Power for the two electric motors doesn't come from batteries, but flywheel accumulator technology from Williams Hybrid Power, an offshoot of the Williams Formula 1 team. The flywheel, encased in a carbonfibre safety cell in the space where the passenger seat would be, spins at up to 40,000rpm and acts as a mechanical energy store for the electric motors. Regenerative braking feeds energy back into the flywheel system – no surprises there, as the technology is derived from Williams' exeprience with Kinetic Energy Recovery Systems (KERS) in F1.

2011 Vauxhall VXR8 revealed

2011 Vauxhall VXR8 will cost £50k The world is woefully short of old-fashioned, rear-wheel drive, hairy-chested saloon cars that actually handle. True, there are still some Yank-Tanks around at less than stellar money that do a good impersonation, but for the real deal you need to buy a Vauxhall. Or at least a Vauxhall from Oz – the 2011 Vauxhall VXR8 (which we saw at Goodwood in the summer in Holden clothes).