Wagner Bd125207 Rear Brake Drum-brake Drum on 2040-parts.com

Lacklustre Pothole Performance Highlighted By Survey

THE GOVERNMENT has got a long way to go to convince drivers that they have the pothole problem in control. That’s the view of 67 percent of motorists polled by road safety charity, the Institute of Advanced Motorists (IAM). According to the IAM’s survey, those respondents believe the government is doing a bad or a very bad job of maintaining the nation’s roads.

BMW 640d xDrive announced

On Thursday, Greg Kable waxed effusively about the new BMW M550d xDrive coupe, suggesting that it was the ultimate 5-series for everyday use. On Friday, Munich announced that the 5's two-door sibling will receive an AWD diesel variant: the 640d xDrive. While not quite as high-zoot as the 5-series' top oil burner, the 640d's 3.0-liter, twin-turbo straight-six cranks out a respectable 465 lb-ft of almighty torque between 1,500 rpm and 2,500 rpm, plus 313 hp at 4,400 rpm—numbers that, according to BMW, will carry the 6-series to 60 mph in 5.2 seconds.

Crash avoidance technology 'can cut crashes by a third'

GROUND-BREAKING rear-end crash avoidance technology can cut the likelihood of these accidents by up to a third, according to the latest crash test results by European safety body Euro NCAP. The Autonomous Emergency Braking (AEB) systems were trialled by Euro NCAP, which independently tests the crash safety standards of new cars in Europe. It tested the cars by driving them towards a dummy car made of an airbag to see which would stop before a collision occurred.