Rear Axle Shaft Dorman 630-100 on 2040-parts.com

One Lap of the Web: New Transformers, home-built cars and two Mercury Marauders

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. -- Michael Bay has been releasing the cars of “Transformers 4” for the past couple of months, and the latest one to be revealed is the Pagani Huayra (“why-ra”).

Aston Martin make Nissan’s Andy Palmer their new CEO

Andy Palmer (pictured) is taking the reins at Aston Martin Lagonda Aston Martin has effectively been without a boss since Ulrich Bez stepped down from the role last year, but that changes with the announcement that Andrew Palmer – until now, Chief Planning Officer of Nissan – is to step in to the role. There’s no specific start date for Andy Palmer at Aston, but Nissan has announced that Philippe Klein will take up Palmer’s role at Nissan on 15 September, so it shouldn’t be long before Palmer holds the reins at Aston Martin. But what exactly has persuaded Andy Palmer to jump from a big corporate behemoth like Nissan to a struggling luxury car maker with owners who either want to tug the operating strings (the Kuwaitis) or are looking for a quick return (Investindustrial)?

The best bits of Monterey Car Week 2014: a Pebble Beach photo gallery

CAR’s Ben Oliver is just back from the races, auctions and shows of Monterey Car Week, culminating in the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance. Here’s his completely unrepresentative photo-diary: as you’ll see, he got most excited by the oddball Concours de LeMons… The standard of restoration required to exhibit at the Concours de LeMons is a little lower than at the other Monterey Car Week events. This is the kind of thing you see parked on the street during Monterey Car Week: the Blastolene Brothers Dream Rod, with its 2000bhp, 41-litre Packard tank engine.