Pollak Heavy-duty Quick-plug Trailer Light Converter 4 To 7 Pins, Store Demo on 2040-parts.com

One Lap of the Web: Mini challenges Porsche; kit cars; and brand loyalty

We spend a lot of time on the Internet -- pretty much whenever we're not driving, writing about or working on cars. Since there's more out there than we'd ever be able to cover, here's our daily digest of car stuff on the Web you may not otherwise have heard about. Mini wished the Porsche 911 a happy 50th anniversary.

GM's Volt engineer Weber moving to Opel

Frank Weber, the German-born engineer in charge of the Chevrolet Volt, is moving back to Germany to take a senior management role at Opel. He will be replaced by Doug Parks, who has been working at Opel since 2007 as chief engineer for GM's global compact cars, which include the Opel Astra and Chevrolet Cruze. General Motors Co.

Volvo’s new VEA family of four-cylinder engines starts production

As a result, Volvo has been planning a new range of four-cylinder engines to power their range in the future – the new Volvo Engine Architecture (VEA) – and has spent the last couple of years readying their design – and their facility in Skövde – to start production. And now it’s underway. Together with Volvo’s Scalable Product Architecture (SPA) the new VEA engines will be a core part of every new Volvo before too long, and will replace the five and six cylinder engines Volvo currently uses and will provide more power than current six-cylinder engines with economy and emissions better than current four-cylinder engines.