Rear Brake Shoes+springs Fit Yamaha 72-73 Ct 175 Ct2 Ct3 on 2040-parts.com

Volkswagen Passat Alltrack: The VW Allroad arrives

The VW Passat Alltrack - debuts in Tokyo Volkswagen has jumped on to the Allroad bandwagon with its own take on Audi’s faux off-roader, with the reveal of the 2012 VW Passat Alltrack. As you would expect, the Passat Alltrack is a butched-up Passat Estate with a raised ride height, extra bits of plastic round the bumpers, skid plates, flared side sills and 4WD – VW’s 4MOTION – for more traction in boot sale car parks. But when you don’t need the 4WD, around 90 poer cent of the drive is through the front wheels – saving fuel – with the rear wheel drive only coming in to play when you start to slip and slide.

One Lap of the Web: 'Mad Men,' the Euro cars and the 2013 Trans Am

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. -- "Mad Men" aficionados are deep into a plot line that has the the fictional New York advertising agency beginning work with Chevrolet to create a campaign for the ill-fated Vega.

New MINI John Cooper Works GP: Official Deatails

The new MINI John Cooper Works GP was revealed earlier in 2012, but now we get full details of MINI’s fastest ever road car. We had a fair amount of details – and some photos – back in May when the new JCW GP was revealed at the MINI United Festival in France, but MINI were a bit light on detail. But now, with the JCW GP soon to go on sale, we have much more detail and lots of photos.