Wiseco - Sk1321 - Standard Bore Piston Kit on 2040-parts.com

New Toyota Avenis (2012) at Frankfurt plus new Prius family and 2012 Yaris

2012 Toyota Avensis - teased ahead of Frankfurt 2011 As Frankfurt draws close its Toyota’s turn to reveal their 2011 offerings at the show, which will include the 2012 facelift Toyota Avensis. The new Avensis is the only Toyota at Frankfurt we haven’t already seen, and Toyota hasn’t done much more than send us the teaser photo you see at the top. But we do know Toyota re claiming the 2012 Avensis is the ‘Most expensive mid-life facelift’ they have ever undertaken.

What's different about electric cars this time? A column by Kevin A. Wilson

Thirteen years after the General Motors EV1 was rolled out to cheers from advocates of a revolution in the way we power automobiles, those same advocates are out front cheerleading yet another revival of an idea as old as the automobile itself: Run 'em on batteries. Batteries aren't a source of energy. They're just storage units, a convenient means of making power portable.

BMW takes the Active Tourer Outdoor outdoors this weekend

This weekend BMW will be taking its BMW Concept Active Tourer Outdoor to the annual OutDoor fair in Friedrichshafen, Germany. We first saw the concept last September, noting that it was a departure for BMW in more ways than one -- with the German automaker stretching itself into segments in which it previously had no foothold. The BMW Active Tourer is meant to preview a whole new generation of small cars from BMW, but one of the biggest changes underneath is a transverse layout of the engine -- a setup that BMW has traditionally shunned in favor of a longitudinal layout.