Eagle 103513850 Cast Steel Crankshaft, Ford 351w 3.85" Stroke 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.

New Skoda Octavia Scout price and spec – costs from £25,315

New Skoda Octavia Scout costs from £25,315 The new Skoda Octavia Scout arrived at the Geneva Motor Show in the Spring, bringing an ‘Allroad’ version of the latest Skoda Octavia Combi (Estate) to the market. As with all estate cars with offroad pretensions, the Octavia Scout comes with a more butch set of bumpers and a more purposeful nose, black cladding for the door sills and wheel arches, a new set of alloys, a raised ride height and a few tweaks for the interior so it all looks more than capable of taking on a muddy boot sale car park. The Scout comes with a choice of two 2.0 litre TDI engines at launch, with a lower powered, 148bhp with a six-speed manual and a more powerful, 182bhp version, getting a six-speed DSG gearbox, both of which return official economy of 55.4mpg (although, oddly, the lower-powered gets emissions of 129g/km and the more powerful 134g/km).

2012 Volvo V40: Now the video leaks

Now its the turn of video of the 2012 Volvo V40 to leak out After many leaks of photos of the new 2012 Volvo V40, this afternoon we get the first new V40 video too. We’ve already run one story on the new Volvo V40 today, with a fairly comprehensive set of photos of Volvo’s new baby estate car leaking out before its launch at Geneva in just a few days. Now we get the new V40 on video after what appears to be Volvo’s launch promo for the V40 turned up on YouTube.