04 06 Yamaha R1 Rear Wheel Axle on 2040-parts.com

Car Designers Blackmailed

A London court has found former design student Guy Lloyd-Parker guilty of blackmailing US car designers. The London College of Fashion graduate had claimed that 95 car design sketches were stolen from him by two college lecturers in 1994, eventually resurfacing as final designs in the form of the Audi TT, BMW Z3, Mazda RX-8 and the Volvo XC90. Lloyd-Parker, having failed to successfully sue the college, began sending menacing letters to California-based Volvo Design Director Geza Loczi, former BMW and Aston Martin designer Henrik Fisker, and ex-Mazda designer Tsutomu Matano demanding £90,000.

One Lap of the Web: The Legend of Ludacris, McLaren engine removal and the Lotus Seven

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. -- Want to see a McLaren F1 get major surgery?

Aston Martin DB4GT Zagato Sanction II Coupé up for grabs at Bonhams sale

Aston Martin DB4GT Zagato Sanction II The Aston Martin sale at Newport Pagnell in May has one of the four Aston Martin DB4 GT Zagato Sanction II Coupés ever built up for sale. The Ferrari 250 GTO may have shown the Aston Martin DB4 GT Zagato a clean pair of heels on track and gone on to be perhaps the most expensive car on the planet. But the truth is the Aston Martin is far more beautiful.