Mercury Timing Gear 43-46745 Item#43 on 2040-parts.com

Mercedes previews technology before Frankfurt auto show

Future Mercedes will crash less often and use less gas doing so. We got a few insights into exactly how that will happen when we attended the Mercedes preview the night before the Frankfurt auto show. Inside its own enormous hall at the International Auto Austellung, Mercedes previewed gas-saving and accident-avoiding technologies we can expect to see on production cars within the next decade.

GM engineers focus on weight, balance for 2013 Cadillac ATS

When engineers at Cadillac built the ATS sedan, they knew that they were competing with some of the best products on the market, such as the BMW 3-series, the Audi A4 and the Mercedes-Benz C-Class. They paid special attention to curb weight to help meet their performance goals. “We designed and engineered the ATS's vehicle architecture to deliver quick, nimble and fun-to-drive dynamics,” said David Masch, ATS chief engineer.

Ram introduces CNG-powered pickup

Aside from the Honda Civic Natural Gas, compressed-natural-gas-powered vehicles have usually been converted after the fact, generally for fleet use. Chrysler is hoping to carve out a niche in the corporate-pickup segment by selling a factory-built CNG Ram 2500 that can seamlessly switch over to gasoline operation when the natural-gas tanks run dry. The twin 4.6-cubic-foot CNG tanks (which store the equivalent of 18.2 gallons of gas) take up a section of the bed, while an eight-gallon gasoline tank provides fuel during start-up and then reserve capacity when the compressed tanks are tapped out, allowing the bruiser a measure of operational flexibility.