Ford Thunderbird Oil Dipstick Tube, 352 V8, 1958-60 on 2040-parts.com

VW Up! to launch at Frankfurt 2011

The VW Up to Launch Frankfurt 2011 It seems like an awfully long time since Volkswagen announced to the world that it was going to make a small range of city cars to cope with modern eco-sensibilities and recession-motivated downsizing. In fact as long ago as April 2009 we reported that VW were to make the Up! in Bratislava with a range of super-eco three-pot engines.

July 14: Figuring out range

Topping off the tank seems to work best. By keeping it full I get a lot more freedom and a lot less range anxiety. Today I drove up to Pasadena twice, down to Los Angeles, west to Santa Monica and all the way back to my office in LA.

VW Polo R confirmed for 2013

VW Polo WRC makes the case for the 4WD VW Polo R We speculated a year ago that the Polo GTI wouldn’t be the top of the Polo tree, and that Volkswagon would roll out the VW Polo R in 2012, but perhaps with FWD instead of the 4WD its big brother, the Golf R, enjoys. But just a few months later it seemed clear that we would end up getting a 4WD Polo R at some point after Audi lost its bottle at the last minute and pulled the Audi S1 badge off a FWD A1, instead calling it the Audi A1 1.4 TFSI. That change of heart by Audi – saving the S1 badge for a quattro S1 – meant that a quattro platform would be developed for the S1, and as the A1 uses the Polo platform it meant a 4WD platform would be available for the Polo too.