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Tomorrow’s world: future petrol engine tech news

By Tim Pollard Motor Industry 28 September 2009 14:15 Petrol engines are changing dramatically. You’ll have heard of the phrase 'downsizing' and most major manufacturers are shrinking their regular gasoline engines to trim emissions and fuel consumption – while employing new tech to keep up the horsepower and torque outputs. This is the holy grail for engineers: maintain the power and performance of the existing big capacity engines we’ve become wedded to, but in a smaller, more economical package.

Alfa Romeo 4C Spider revealed: Geneva Motor Show

The Alfa Romeo 4C Spider (pictured) revealed in Geneva The Alfa Romeo 4C is the epitome of a modern ‘supercar’, with ultra light weight (for a production car) allowing the 4C to produce very good performance from its modest 17500cc engine. So producing an Spider convertible immediately raises the weight issue in a more dramatic way when the car’s abilities are so dependent on it low weight, but it seems the Alfa Romeo 4C Spider – previewed as a production car with a concept at Geneva today – has managed to keep the wight penalties of the convertible 4C down to a minimum. Thanks to a canvas roof and carbon fibre rollover bars, the weight penalty for the Spider is only about 60kg (around a 7 per cent gain) which shouldn’t hurt performance too much.

Motorway pile-up 'like pinball'

DRIVERS involved in a fatal pile-up on a motorway entered a "wall of blackness" before suffering numerous impacts as if they were "a pinball machine", a jury heard. Seven people died and 51 were injured after 34 cars collided when a section of the M5 in Somerset was suddenly "engulfed in thick smog". Anthony and Pamela Adams, Maggie and Michael Barton, Malcolm Beacham, Terry Brice and Kye Thomas died in the incident, on November 4 2011.