Fel-pro Gaskets Fpg 60980 - Exhaust Pipe Gasket on 2040-parts.com

One Lap of the Web: Porsche flat-fours, hot rod artists and German car shows

We spend a lot of time on the Internet -- pretty much whenever we're not driving, writing about or working on cars. Since there's more out there than we'd ever be able to cover, here's our daily digest of car stuff on the Web you may not otherwise have heard about. -- You've heard of watching paint dry, but NHTSA has a new hobby: watching Fords rust.

BMW i3 caught testing in New York

BMW has been hyping its futuristic i lineup for years now, but the long lead time doesn't mean that the highly efficient, carbon-fiber-based vehicles are vaporware. Earlier this month, we test drove pre-production versions of the i3 and i8, and last week, Autoweek reader Frank Cogliano spied the former vehicle on the road. Cogliano caught this wrapped i3 near Stony Point, New York -- about 30 minutes from BMW's New Jersey headquarters.

Beanz Meanz More Eco-Friendly Future Fords

THE car industry is full of interesting and unusual business partnerships, but this latest tie-up between Ford and Heinz promises to be one of the more intriguing. Far from seeking to produce 57 varieties of any particular new Ford model, the two firms are exploring the use of tomato fibre to develop a sustainable composite materials for use in vehicle manufacturing. For example, boffins believe that dried tomato skins could become the wiring brackets in future Ford vehicles or the storage bin a customer uses to hold coins and other small objects.