Seadoo 800 Valves on 2040-parts.com

Birth of an Icon

The first thing you notice when you step into Icon's sprawling, 120,000-square-foot shop in Chatsworth, Calif. -- past the fenced-in yard of Broncos of every size and Land Cruisers of every generation, past the 1952 Chrysler Town & Country station wagon with the DeSoto front end and a massaged patina of greens, browns, and ochres resembling a Cezanne painting -- is the smell. It smells old in here.

The Name Game: Why the next Buick will be called the Verano

Verano means “summer” in Spanish, though it could easily be a type of coffee or even a brand of crystal. But the idea behind the latest Buick was to snare an upscale, forward-sounding name to lure to new customers. Buick could have gone with an alpha-numeric designation, or even dipped into its heritage for a storied moniker from the past.

Vauxhall VXR8 & SMART for-two CDI take MPG Marathon honours

Vauxhall VXR8 & SMART for-two CDI take MPG Marathon honours On the face of it, it’s reasonable to expect a car as small as the SMART for-two CDI to be capable of astonishing economy if driven in a certain way. And the ALD Automotive / Shell FuelSave MPG Marathon, run last week near Cirencester, proved exactly that, with a SMART driven by Mick Linford and co-driver Ella Flynn managing to use less than four gallons of diesel to cover the 370 mile route. That means the SMART fortwo CDI averaged 99.24mpg on the route on real roads, an improvement of 16 per cent on the official combined figure of 85.6.