Wilwood Rotor 160-9812 on 2040-parts.com

Fifth Gear Tonight: Skoda Fabia vRS, BMW M6, DIY Servicing & best small cars

Fifth Gear tonight sees Vicki in the Skoda Fabia vRS, Tiff testing best small cars, Jason with the BMW M6 and Jonny on DIY car servicing. With no Top Gear on TV now the latest series has ended (well, apart from the ‘Best of’ Sky+ insists on recording) it’s Fifth Gear for your TV petrolhead fix, with tonight’s episode – episode 6 – offering old-fashioned consumer advice as well as a bit of blasting and blatting in something interesting. Vicki Butler-Henderson is off for a performance motoring triathlon in the company of Norwegian rally star Andreas Mikkelsen, with fun in a pair of single-seat race cars, a race against the clock in a 200bhp off-road buggy and a proper play and test of the appealing Skoda Fabia vRS (you can see a clip of the Fabia vRS test in the video below).

Non-starting Nissan LEAFs to be reprogrammed

NIssan LEAF - date with a laptop They’re not exactly thick on the ground but, as we reported just a week ago, Nissan has already got problems with the Nissan LEAF, which has been refusing to restart once it’s stopped. Not restarting is not exactly a safety issue, so as long as you can actually get your nice new Nissan LEAF to start in the first place there’s no chance it will pack up on you mid-journey (unless you run out of electrickery). But having stumped up at least £10k more than an equivalent ICE car would cost for your LEAF, the least you should be able to expect is it to do what it says on the tin without packing up.

Nissan ‘Think Outside the Parking Box’ competition

Nissan, in collaboration with designboom, has launched an international graphic design competition with a theme to design the future of urban parking. Entitled 'Think Outside the Parking Box', registration to the competition is open to professionals, students, and design enthusiasts until September 27th, 2009. Based around Nissan's Qashqai urban crossover - currently marketed as being 'urbanproof' - the brief calls for entries that challenge any element of urban parking, be it underground, exterior, interior, multi-layer or ground level.