Truxp Premium Lift Kits - Aa95041 on 2040-parts.com

AutoWeek office swag: Mazda rotary-engine keychain with realistic motion

When I got the keys to our long-term 2011 Mazda 5 last week, they came with a surprise--this aluminum-and-brass keychain in the shape of a rotary-engine housing, complete with moving rotor. The rotor doesn't just rattle around or spin in a circle. Thanks to a thumbwheel on the back of the housing, coupled with a timing gear and offset crank journal, the thing actually moves in an approximation of epitrochoidal motion just like a real Wankel.

Early cars, fashion on display at the Petersen

Automotivated, a new exhibit at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles, traces the evolution of clothes worn in cars--from the bulky circus-tent stuff people had to wear to keep from freezing to death in the jangly, open-topped conveyances of 100 years ago, up to the height of the European Concours in the 1920s and '30s, when what you and your date wore was just as important to winning best of show as the styling of your Delahaye/Delage/Talbot Lago. “In the earliest days of the automobile, you were sitting on the car, you weren't sitting in it,” said Leslie Kendall, curator at the Petersen. So the first section of the exhibit shows people (mannequins dressed as people) in heavy, practical overcoats, scarves and goggles.

New Ford Focus (2011 / 2012) at Detroit

The 2011 / 2012 Ford Focus - starts out as a saloon or hatchback The new Ford Focus – possibly the most important car in Ford’s history – debuts today at the Detroit Motor Show. Which is in itself an indication that the 2011 / 2012 Ford Focus will be the beacon for Ford’s ‘One Ford’ policy of producing basically the same cars for markets throughout the world. Scheduled to start production at the end of 2010 – and start hitting customer’s driveways in early 2011 – the new Ford Focus is just one of ten variations on the Global C Platform which Ford will launch in the next few years.