Want to know how to get a good chunk of the Detroit 3, no money down? Easy: Today, Fiat increased its ownership of Chrysler from 20 percent to 25 percent. What did they pay for it? Niente. Fiat received the extra shares “upon the Company’s achievement of the first of three performance-related milestones,” as a Chrysler Group LLC press release proclaims. And what is that milestone? They started making an engine. (Read More…)

Here’s a question that may well be impossible to answer, due to the numerous gray areas involved. Sure, we could set all kinds of limitations (e.g., “production run” applies only to engines built by the original manufacturer) and of course you stumble into the quagmire of defining when changes to an engine design become significant enough to result in a different engine… but why should we do that? (Read More…)

Some folks will tell you that you need a big ol’ truck to haul a grimy cast-iron V8, but those folks are wrong! My beater ’92 Civic, which stood up well when compared to the Audi R8, not only sports a trailer hitch (no doubt suitable for hauling popcorn carts weighing up to several hundred pounds) but the cargo-area capacity to take a disassembled Chrysler LA engine. (Read More…)

It’s hard to believe that The General was once so dominant that it sweated over the fear of being split up by the federal government via antitrust regulations, and that GM’s divisions cranked out more than 25 separate passenger-car engine types (counting Opel and Holden models) during the decade. Why, The General boasted ten different car V8s during the 1960s (not counting earlier models intended for warranty replacements, industrial use, etc); eight of those engines were being built in 1965 alone. Imagine a manufacturer today so mighty that it could offer eight totally different V8 engines (in 14 displacements) for sale in its new cars! (Read More…)

Via Top Gear comes this in-car footage of the Porsche GT3 R Hybrid lapping a racetrack and making some peculiar sounds in the process. Part Porsche purr, part RC Car whine, this new note is one of the first hints at what future supercars will sound like, in particular the forthcoming Porsche 918 Spyder. It may not be the most viscerally evocative sound ever recorded, but dammit, it’s the future.

Remember the miracle carburetor that would have halved the gasoline consumption, if the wicked oil companies would not have bought the patent and locked it away? As a matter of fact, the lowly ICE has made great strides when it comes to reducing consumption, a drive that has traditionally been championed in Europe and to some degree Japan. (Read More…)

In the early days of McLaren’s MP4-12C development, it was suggested that the new mid-engine supercar would use AMG’s 6.2 liter V8. As things got awkward between Mercedes and McLaren though, a mysterious “German-built V10” was rumored to be have replaced the AMG unit under at least one testing prototype. In the end, McLaren built its own engine, the M838T. It’s a twin-turbocharged, direct-injected, 3.8 litre, 90° V8, developing about 600 horsepower at 8,500 RPM. 80 percent of its 442 lb-ft of torque is reportedly available under 2,000 RPM. Also, it looks like mechanical sex.

Almost exactly a month ago we asked:

Fiatsler is bringing Fiat back to the US as a one-model-brand (500) with a dedicated sales and support staff just to meet one of these government benchmarks… will they be crazy enough to build an engine in Michigan and ship them to Mexico to meet another?

The short answer: of course. Fiat gets five percent of Chrysler’s equity for building the engine in the states, but unless there are unrevealed US-market applications for an engine with 92 lb-ft of torque, they’ll all be shipped to Mexico and installed in Fiat 500s. According to Marchionne, half of the Toluca, Mexico Fiat 500 production will be sold in the US with the other half going to Brazil. For a guy who regularly bemoans the poor strategic positioning of Fiat’s factory sites, Marchionne is surprisingly willing to bend a few principles for five percent of Chrysler’s equity. Will it work? Sergio is still asking for time, telling reporters “by the end of 2011 and in early 2012, you should be able to tell how our plan is working.”

TTAC Commentator Detroit-Iron writes:

I have a 2000 Ford Ranger, 2wd 3.0L V6 with 143k miles. The CEL has been on for at least last 70k and I finally went to AutoZone and got the code read. Turns out the O2 sensor is bad and the EGR valve is stuck. Is that the kind of thing that I can fix myself? I don’t want to put a whole lot of money in this truck seeing as it has a lot of miles and has been running reasonably well, if inefficiently (21 mpg all highway), for so long. I have an ok tool set and I do my brakes, but I recently paid $70 to have the fuel filter replaced-I’ve done it before and I didn’t want to do it again. The truck is going back to my parents to be semi-retired and put into “farm use” so I wouldn’t mind fixing it up a little before giving it back but I don’t want to spend a lot.

(Read More…)