13615 Meyer Stop Assembly on 2040-parts.com

Porsche reports big drop in sales

Well, it’s not exactly a surprise, given the doom and gloom in the industry at the moment, but Porsche has just reported a 27% drop in sales, down to 34,000 units, over the last six months. As you would expect, some models fared worse than others. The recently updated Porsche 911, which has had mid-cycle tweaks including the new PDK ‘box, held up pretty well.

Jaguar Lightweight E-Type makes a comeback after 50 years – 6 new Lightweights to be built

6 new Jaguar Lightweight E-Types on the way Even in 1963, car makers made ‘special editions’ of production cars, and one such car was the Jaguar Lightweight E-Type, a lightweight version of the then new production E-Type designed to take Jaguar racing. This was in the days before carbon fibre panels, so Jaguar built many of the body panels from aluminium and fitted an aluminium block version of the 3.8 litre engine from the production E-Type with 300bhp (55bhp more than the road car), fuel injection and a ZF 5-speed gearbox. The Lightweight E-Type wasn’t a spectacular success on the track, and Jaguar ended up building just 12 of the original planned run of 18.

Mini takes to the field for London 2012

Although there’s no motorsport in the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, Mini will be making an appearance during the track and field events in the Olympic stadium. A fleet of three remote-controlled, quarter-scale Mini Cooper JCWs are charged with retrieving javelins, discus, shot and hammer, and will cover around 6000 metres per day while on duty. Each ‘mini Mini’ has a potential payload of 8kg, and will be operated by specially-trained ‘Games Makers’.