Raybestos Wc37787 Rear Wheel Cylinder on 2040-parts.com

Transmissions gone wild!

If you've been car shopping recently, or just paying attention to Autoweek car reviews, you've noticed that the six-speed automatic -- de rigueur as recently as a year ago -- suddenly has ratio envy. The new hotness? Eight- and nine-speed automatic transmissions.

BMW i3 EV revealed. It’s clever, but it’s not exactly pretty

The BMW i3 electric city car (pictured) has been officially revealed The BMW i3 – the first of BMW’s production ‘i’ electric cars – has finally been revealed at events in London, New York and Beijing as BMW plots its course to bring a premium electric city car to the world. Looking much like the original Mega City Concept, the i3 debuts a number of innovations from BMW – which are very clever – but it also debuts perhaps the worst looking BMW we’ve ever seen, with its incongruous lines, bulging bonnet, odd shapes on the flanks and slab-backed rear view. But what underpins the i3 is clever indeed, with a lightweight inner body made from carbon fibre and carbon fibre reinforced body panels providing the skin, all conspiring to make the i3 light – 1195kg, despite 25 per cent or so of that being batteries – and very rigid.

Mercedes SL (2012) first official pictures

All-new SLs seem to come around as often as Halley’s Comet, but here are the first Stuttgart-sanctioned shots of Mercedes’ sixth generation premium roadster – the 2012 Mercedes SL. If it looks familiar, that’s because it’s already had more lenses pointed at its disguised bodywork than Pippa Middleton’s derrière – and CAR’s own renderings earlier this year weren’t far wide of the mark. So what’s the big news with the new 2012 Mercedes SL then?