2004 Mercury 50 Hp 4 Stroke Lower Port Cowl Cowling Cover Shroud on 2040-parts.com

Jaguar & Land Rover to share more platforms. But you already knew that.

As Jaguar and Land Rover expand their model range and move to aluminium construction, they plan to share more platforms. Jaguar has been using an aluminium platform for the XJ for some time – long before the latest XJ came along. The aluminium platform the XJ uses is just the start for Jaguar Land Rover, as we reported back in 2009, and it seems that JLR are planning to use the move to aluminium underpinnings to cut their platforms to just two or three.

Study finds design flaws, not parts defects, account for most interior-quality issues

Design problems, not bad parts, are to blame for consumers not liking car interiors, the latest results from an annual study by J. D. Power and Associates shows.

VW Design Vision GTI gets 500bhp: Worthersee

The Design Vision GTI is built to show what a Golf built for racing would look like – and perhaps point to future evolutions of VW’s most successful car – and is built on the same MQB platform as the regular GTI. It’s a bit shorter (15mm) than a regular Golf, a chunk wider (71mm) and a lot lower (57mm) which conspires to make the Design Vision GTI much more aggressive looking than its mainstream sibling. Power comes from a 3.0 litre V6 with two turbos – good for 500bhp and 413lb/ft of torque – which is driven to all four wheels through a DSG ‘box and can scoot to 62mph in a supercar-like 3.9 seconds on its way to 186mph.