Standard Motor Products Cca1168 Cruise Control Switch on 2040-parts.com

Jaguar Land Rover U-turn: all three UK plants saved

Jaguar Land Rover today surprised us all by announcing that it wouldn't be closing any of its three UK plants. CEO of Tata Motors Carl-Peter Forster had told CAR as recently as the Paris motor show a few weeks ago that one plant would shut. Instead, today the unions and Jaguar Land Rover hailed a landmark deal to save jobs and all three plants at Castle Bromwich, Solihull and Halewood.

One Lap of the Web: Moby Dick, mass transit failures, and the return of the Ford Rotunda

-- The Porsche 935/78 race car, perhaps better known as Moby Dick, looks a bit like a typical 911 that someone heated up until it was pliable and then slowly, carefully stretched until its nose and tail were elongated past the point of absurdity. And then someone else came along and stuck a giant wing on the back. But it is a real car, and Speedhunters has proof in the form of a photo essay.

Bonhams' Greenwich auction will show Italian rarities

The biggest star of Bonhams' seventh annual Greenwich auction will be the 1975 Lamborghini Countach LP400 Periscopica shown above, a pristine early example of the legendary wedge with a single owner and less than 10,500 miles -- its roof carried a groove cut into the sheetmetal that allowed light to hit the rearview mirror, providing a still-laughable semblance of rearward visibility. Of course, the door is always preferable. Just 158 LP400 Countachs were ever produced, before the firm moved on in 1978 to the outrageously styled LP400S.