Mercury Mariner Impeller Replaces 47-19453t 27-8m4502052 27-822189 on 2040-parts.com

The no-show cars: a reader rant on mad concepts

Instigated by Harley Earl at General Motors in the late 30s with the quaintly named Buick Y-Job, show cars, or concept cars, were presented to an excited public eager for new things. As the world recovered from a depression and then a war, these vehicles pointed to a better future that many people believed in, including the people who produced them. And, although many of the concept cars of the 50s, with their Jetsons plexiglass roofs and notional nuclear powered engines seem ludicrous now, in their time they weren’t that cynical.

Good news for British car factories

NEW FIGURES have revealed that UK-based car production raced ahead in April, resulting in the biggest monthly rise since July 2012. A total of 133,437 cars were made in the UK last month – a 21.3% increase on the April 2013 figure, the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) said. The excellent April figures took the year-so-far total to 538,240 – a 6.9% rise on the figure for January-April 2013.

American hero Dave Kinney drags Avanti no. 2 back to life

Autoweek contributor, appraiser, valuation expert and rural quiz-bowl champ Dave Kinney has a thing for Studebaker Avantis. He claims to have owned around 100 of them, though we've heard that the real number is higher than that. One of those Avantis was the second one that Studebaker ever built.