10987- Club Car 1984-87 Starter Belt on 2040-parts.com

2014 European Car of the Year finalists revealed. Could the Mercedes S-Class win?

Could the 2014 Mercedes S-Class (pictured) win the Car of the Year? We’re at the end of 2013, so the time has arrived to take a look at the finalists for the 2014 European Car of the Year award. In the last few years, despite Europe producing some of the most impressive luxury and performance cars on the planet, the Car of the Year Award has gone to much more prosaic machinery.

One Lap of the Web: Packards -- Ask the man who knows way too much about one

-- For some light Wednesday reading, here's more information than you ever wanted to know about Packard. It includes the horrible neoclassics that plagued the 1970s, and the 1995 revival of the Packard name that attempted to stick a shortened rendition of the famous Packard grille in front of a 440-hp V12, all wrapped in a shape that looked like a melted Twix, as shown above. Our august associate editor Graham Kozak owns a Packard, so he could have filled us in on the details.

Jaguar XF Sportbrake gets matching Jaguar Speedboat

Jaguar has revealed a Speedboat Concept at the first XF Sportbrake driving events to show how Jaguar design translates in other products. Before you get too excited, the Jaguar Speedboat isn’t a new item on the XF Sportbrake’s option list, but an exercise in translating Jaguar’s design philosophy in to an alternative product; one that fits seamlessly with Jaguar’s ‘Lifestyle’ pitch for the XF Sportbrake. Jaguar’s design guru, Ian Callum, said: We recognise that both our existing and future customers enjoy diverse and active lifestyles.