1970 Vw Beetle "rat Rod" 350 V8 Under The Hood! Wickedly Fast! on 2040-cars

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Volkswagen Golf R Evo may debut at Beijing Motor Show

If a report in Auto Express is correct, a lighter, faster brother to the Volkswagen Golf R will be shown to the world at the Beijing Motor Show in April. Said to be called the Golf R Evo, the even harder hot hatch would be unveiled as one of those concepts that's practically a de facto presentation of the genuine thing. The Evo in its name will come from having a carbon fiber roof and CF in the bodywork, lighter wheels, thinner bucket seats up front and a roll cage instead of rear seats.
If there's a power increase, it's been described as "a small bump." However, as the report mentions, if the Jenny Craig regimen can drop 100 kilograms (220 pounds) from the the 3,247-pound weight of the European Golf R, then the Golf R Evo will do about the same damage on the scales as the Golf but have at least 50 more horsepower and 44 more pound-feet of torque.
Since we still don't have the current Golf, this isn't something that should keep you awake even if the 'concept' does become a production model. But it is good to know that the Golf R is really going to start pushing its boundaries.

Prop-driven VW Beetle hopes to land in Bonneville [w/video]

Sometimes you meet folks who, when they tell you "Hey, I have an idea," your reflex response is to stop what you're doing and tell yourself, "Get ready...." We imagine Mike Niemans is one of those folks, and the idea in question is putting a tank engine on a Type 1 Volkswagen Beetle. Not just any old tank engine - as if there were such a thing when we're talking about putting them in cars - but a 668-cubic-inch, 220-horsepower radial engine built by Continental in 1941 and procured from an M2 tank.
In the image above Nieman is using the tank clutch hub to get the motor set up, but in one of the images below you can see what really belongs back there is: a two-inch, reverse-pitch prop taken from a wind generator. He says there's enough mojo with the propeller action to get the car rolling down the runway like a jet when he gives it gas - and speaking of gas, the engine's been refitted to run on propane.
After a few safety tweaks Nieman's going to take the matte-black Beetle to Bonneville, "put the prop on, let her go and see what happens!" We can't wait to see the video of that. There are two shakedown videos below to get you ready.

VW's Winterkorn tells 20,000 staffers of big cost-cutting plans

During a gathering of 20,000 Volkswagen Group employees at company headquarters in Wolfsburg, Germany on Wednesday, CEO Martin Winterkorn dropped a bombshell. The boss stated that the automaker isn't operating efficiently enough and admitted the company needs to radically start cutting back to raise its profit margins. To right the ship, Winterkorn has proposed killing off less profitable models and spending less on research and development.
According to Reuters, Winterkorn wants to raise the VW brand's profit margin from about 2.9 percent in 2013 to a target of 6 percent. To make that possible, his plan amounts to increasing cost cutting until Volkswagen reaches about 5 billion euros ($6.7 billion) per year to get things back in order. "Over the short-term, we urgently need more efficiency and higher profit," the CEO said during his speech, according to Reuters.
However, Winterkorn can't make these decisions unilaterally. Volkswagen's works council also has a seat on the supervisory board to represent laborers, and it isn't likely to take the proposed cuts sitting down.