Raymarine Stng Backbone Cbl 1m - A06034 on 2040-parts.com

Concept Car of the Week: Dodge Deora (1967)

Half concept car, half custom but all awesome, the Dodge Deora was designed by former GM designer Harry Bentley Bradley for the famous car customizers the Alexander brothers who wanted to build a radical custom truck using one of the Big Three's new cabover mini-pickups. They relied on Bradley's futuristic drawings to seduce Chrysler who eventually agreed to provide a stripped down A100 truck for them to customize although the final design shares almost nothing with the original donor car. The cabin was radically chopped and integrated into the rest of the body and – after its suspension was also lowered – the overall height of the Deora was reduced by a whopping 380mm.

Ellesmere Port Celebrates Five Decades Of Production

VAUXHALL recently celebrated 50 years of production at its Ellesmere Port facility by recreating the original 1964 press image of the first vehicle coming off the line, in the same production location with today’s Astra alongside. The first new car to be produced at Ellesmere Port was a Vauxhall Viva HA, a model name that would run in a number of variants until 1978, when it was replaced by the Chevette. The Viva cost £527 7s 11d at launch.

It looks like Aston Martin could be getting AMG/Mercedes platforms too

Mercedes/AMG platforms would make the Lagonda SUV a reality We’d been expecting Aston Martin to get access to Mercedes platforms ever since the Lagonda SUV – based on the underpinnings of the Mercedes GL - arrived in all its ‘beauty’ in 2009. The Lagonda SUV was met with wails of anguish from lovers of Aston Martin’s timeless beauty but, despite the horror at the looks of the SUV, the prospect that Aston Martin could be heading down a collaboration route with Mercedes was welcome. It was welcome because without the support of a major car maker – and access to its technology – Aston Martin would have little chance of a bright future; there is no way a minnow like Aston Martin could afford the development cost of new engines and platforms.