One Goodyear Assurance Comfortred Touring, 225/70/16 P225/70r16, Tire # 42251 Qa on 2040-parts.com

Driven: Renault Clio 4

Having pioneered the ‘small car, big-car features' trend with original version, Renault has sold over 12 million Clios since the model was launched in 1991. The box-fresh ‘91 Clio RT Renault displayed alongside its successors at the launch of the Clio 4 is testament to what a successful formula was struck. Will time be as kind to the new Clio 4?

Honda Civic (2012): teaser info, photos and video

Honda's third new 2012 Civic announcement - 31 August 2011 And today Honda shows us this tantalising glimpse of the rear of the new Civic, a couple of weeks before its full unveiling at the 2011 Frankfurt motor show. It reveals an interesting rump clearly inspired by the (at-the-time) space-age rear end of the outgoing Civic, with arrow-shaped back lights seguing into a horizontal spoiler which appears to bisect the rear screen. We'll see the full car on 13 September.

Porsche 911 GT3 R Hybrid (2011) first official pictures

Porsche has released details of its updated 911 GT3 R Hybrid – the 2010 original nearly won last year's Nurburgring 24hr race before (ironically) it retired with petrol engine failure.  The 2011 Porsche 911 GT3 R Hybrid – the lowdown Before this report disappears in a chorus of ‘it looks the same as last year’s one’, let's outline where Porsche’s engineers have been busy. At the unfashionable end of the car remains a 4.0-litre flat-six engine producing approximately 470bhp. Up front are twin electric motors, now producing 75kW of power each (up from 60kW) and combined these give the GT3 R Hybrid a 197bhp electric boost, which can be programmed to activate automatically via the throttle pedal, or manually selected during overtaking. F1-derived hybrid tech for the 911 GT3 R Hybrid Power for the two electric motors doesn't come from batteries, but flywheel accumulator technology from Williams Hybrid Power, an offshoot of the Williams Formula 1 team. The flywheel, encased in a carbonfibre safety cell in the space where the passenger seat would be, spins at up to 40,000rpm and acts as a mechanical energy store for the electric motors. Regenerative braking feeds energy back into the flywheel system – no surprises there, as the technology is derived from Williams' exeprience with Kinetic Energy Recovery Systems (KERS) in F1.