Michael Fernie

Winter’s a time of year that throws up lots of different road conditions, none of which are particularly friendly to cars or drivers: ice, snow, rain, salt, early nights and low, blinding sunlight. There are, of course, some ways of staving off the worst effects of winter on cars, and the one we arguably hear the most about are winter tyres.

If you get down to the ground and have a nosy through the wheel spokes of a vehicle equipped with drum brakes, you may be able to spot the edge of a plate nestled behind the brake drum itself. This is a backing plate – something you’ve likely never given much thought to, but it’s the unsung hero of a braking system. In short, a backing plate is a pressed plate steel on which the wheel cylinder and brakes shoes are mounted to.

After first being introduced through Ferrari's Formula 1 programme in the early 1980s, hot V turbo engines have been resurrected in performance cars like the Mercedes-AMG GT and Porsche Panamera. So what is a hot V engine and how does it benefit forced induction? Found most recently in the brand new Porsche Panamera, a hot V engine has exhaust ports pointing inwards; the opposite direction to a conventional setup.