Valvoline Vr1 20w50 Motor Oil 1 Qt P/n 822347-c on 2040-parts.com

The scramble for scarce tires

North American automakers are struggling with a nagging shortage of tires, caused in part by tire plant closings and rising demand for low-volume specialty tires. Automakers are paying much higher prices -- double-digit percentage increases from a year ago -- as tire makers gain pricing power. "We have been bombarded from every side for additional tires, and we can't keep up," said David O'Donnell, Continental Tire's vice president of original equipment in the Americas.

Merdad vision of the Range Rover Evoque – the Evoque Mer-Nazz

The Merdad Evoque Mer-Nazz We’re already starting to see the first efforts of the pimpers, tuners, modders and customisers on the new Range Rover Evoque surfacing, and the latest is the Merdad Evoque Mer-Nazz Regular readers with good memories will remember Merdad as the man unfortunate enough to be the UK arm of the Gemballa operation when everything went wrong for Uwe Gemballa. That meant the end of Gemballa in the UK, but Merdad has bounced back with his now eponymous company to create extreme cars for those with tastes for more unsubtle forms of car customisation. Merdad’s first effort was a very Gembala-esque two-door Cayenne, but he went British with a subsequent effort when he created the McLaren MP4-12C MehRon, which we took to be an homage to Ron Dennis.

New Infiniti G Series to debut at 2013 Detroit Auto Show

The new 2013 / 2014 Infiniti G Series will debut at the Detroit Motor Show in January before going on sale later in 2013. Infiniti may not have managed to make the biggest mark on the car landscape in the UK, but the news of a new G-Series is interesting because it seems likely it will offer a more interesting design and more Europe-focused powertrains. The current Infini G37 comes as a 3.7 litre V6 and nothing else, which doesn’t exactly help sales in Europe where economy and CO2 levels are a bigger driver of sales than they are in Infiniti’s main market, the USA.