Mickey Thompson 90000000929 M/t Classic Ii; Wheel on 2040-parts.com

Birth of an Icon

The first thing you notice when you step into Icon's sprawling, 120,000-square-foot shop in Chatsworth, Calif. -- past the fenced-in yard of Broncos of every size and Land Cruisers of every generation, past the 1952 Chrysler Town & Country station wagon with the DeSoto front end and a massaged patina of greens, browns, and ochres resembling a Cezanne painting -- is the smell. It smells old in here.

BMW M5 manual mess-up

By Chris chilton Motor Industry 27 January 2007 01:34 North American customers were delighted when BMW bowed to their demands for a full three-pedal manual version of the current V10 M5 super saloon, but aren’t quiet so enamoured with the finished product. The issue is not with the gearbox itself – BMW successfully replaced the European model’s seven-speed SMG box with the old-shape M5’s six-speed manual – but with the compromises that were needed to get there. Without the benefit of computer control for the opening and closing of the clutch plates, M division’s engineers couldn’t eliminate axle tramp under hard take-offs.

Eterniti Hemera (2011) at Frankfurt motor show

Eterniti Motors – the fledgling UK luxury car start-up – has shown its new Hemera SUV ahead of its debut at this week’s 2011 Frankfurt motor show. It’s now become apparent that Eterniti will rebody the Porsche Cayenne 4x4 at its London factory to an even higher spec – they say – than when it emerges from Stuttgart. So the Eterniti Hemera is a posh Cayenne?