King Kma 20 Marker Beacon Receiver Audio Panel on 2040-parts.com

Mini catches a wave with Airstream trailer concept

Car companies are known for claiming their designs are inspired by racing or aviation themes. Mini is going in a different direction: the beach. The diminutive small-car maker has released more details on a design study that mates a modified Mini Cooper S Clubman with a 22-foot long Airstream trailer under a watersports premise.

Porsche 911 GT3 R Hybrid (2011) first official pictures

Porsche has released details of its updated 911 GT3 R Hybrid – the 2010 original nearly won last year's Nurburgring 24hr race before (ironically) it retired with petrol engine failure.  The 2011 Porsche 911 GT3 R Hybrid – the lowdown Before this report disappears in a chorus of ‘it looks the same as last year’s one’, let's outline where Porsche’s engineers have been busy. At the unfashionable end of the car remains a 4.0-litre flat-six engine producing approximately 470bhp. Up front are twin electric motors, now producing 75kW of power each (up from 60kW) and combined these give the GT3 R Hybrid a 197bhp electric boost, which can be programmed to activate automatically via the throttle pedal, or manually selected during overtaking. F1-derived hybrid tech for the 911 GT3 R Hybrid Power for the two electric motors doesn't come from batteries, but flywheel accumulator technology from Williams Hybrid Power, an offshoot of the Williams Formula 1 team. The flywheel, encased in a carbonfibre safety cell in the space where the passenger seat would be, spins at up to 40,000rpm and acts as a mechanical energy store for the electric motors. Regenerative braking feeds energy back into the flywheel system – no surprises there, as the technology is derived from Williams' exeprience with Kinetic Energy Recovery Systems (KERS) in F1.

Koenigsegg to celebrate 100th car with special model

Koenigsegg, Swedish makers of stunning supercars, are planning a very special model to celebrate their 100th car. Christian Von Koenigsegg founded his eponymous supercar company back in 1994, but it took until 2002 for the first customer car to be delivered. That first car was the Koenigsegg CC8 (a development of Christian’s original CC prototype) which featured bespoke everything – from chassis to suspension and brakes – but utilised a Ford 4.7 litre V8.