Genuine 1988-05 Kawasaki Kx Crankshaft Piston Small End Bearing 13033-1053 on 2040-parts.com

Dacia won’t build a car smaller than the Sandero

The Dacia Sandero (pictured) will remain Dacia’s smallest model In austere times, budget buys sell. Which is why Dacia is having so much success with its compact Sandero and Duster SUV. With prices on the Sandero starting at just £5,995 and Duster SUV prices as little as £8,995 (although you’ll have to pay £10,995 for a 4WD version), car buyers are buying Dacias as quickly as Renault can build them, with sales in a European market that shrank by 7 per cent last year up by 18 per cent to 90,000 cars for Dacia.

VW Sharan MPV (2010) at Geneva motor show

This is the new Volkswagen Sharan, and it’s about time too - the original was launched in 1995. In the time it’s taken VW to replace the Sharan, Ford has ditched its Sharan-based Galaxy, launched a new version using S-Max and Mondeo parts, and facelifted it. We’ve all laughed at the geriatric Saab 9-5, but for the mighty Volkswagen Group this seems like a serious oversight.

Car makers to be forced to disclaim ‘Official’ economy figures

We’ve banged on for a long time about the futility of official economy figures, especially as car makers get better and better at ‘gaming’ the official economy tests to produce the results they want. Much of the impetus to create the best headline economy figure for a car is driven by taxation, with car makers well aware that the better the official economy results are, the lower their CO2 will be (CO2 isn’t tested for – it’s just extrapolated from the official mpg) and the more appealing the car will be to buyers, particularly fleet buyers. But a ruling by the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) against Audi could at least see car makers having to admit in their adverts that the ‘official’ economy figure bears no relation to what owners can expect to achieve in the real world.