Sierra 79651 Outboard Fuel/water Separator Kit / Fuel Water Sepa on 2040-parts.com

Rockin' Supercar: The Rebirth, Short Life, and Death of a Shark-Fin-Equipped '85 Toyota Tercel Wagon

Sometimes a very ordinary car becomes something special, maybe even loved, but that's not always enough to keep it out of the jaws of the crusher. This is the story of a second-gen Toyota Tercel wagon (known in Japan as the Sprinter Carib) and its journey from auction to lumber-hauler to kid transportation to a Chinese steel factory. Around the turn of the century, while I was working at a doomed dot-com in San Francisco's South of Market neighborhood, I discovered that the city auctioned off all the unclaimed tow-away cars every week at nearby Pier 70.

Ferrari 458 Speciale (2013) at Frankfurt motor show

More power and pace, less weight and extra helpings of oversteer – here comes the Ferrari 458 Speciale. Regular customers will be reaching for their bank cards and road testers will be jockeying for a test drive of the extreme 458, because Ferrari has taken the most thrilling mid-engined car on the planet and turned the volume up to 11. The 458 Speciale follows in the smokin’ tyre tracks of the 360 Challenge Stradale and 430 Scuderia, in being the maximum attack version of Ferrari’s current mid-engined V8 berlinetta.

Mitsubishi GC-PHEV concept stars at the Tokyo Motor Show 2013

Mitsubishi has no less than three future-reaching concept cars on display at Tokyo 2013, and this is the biggest of all of them. It’s called the Concept GC-PHEV, and amongst many other things gives us a sneak peak at current thinking for the next-generation Mitsubishi Shogun. However, it also features a 3.0-litre supercharged V6 and a plug-in electric hybrid system, and a cabin with more touchscreens than your local electronics emporium.