Autos24

ASKED TO name a small hot hatch, you'd probably be pretty far down the list before you got to the Suzuki Swift, if you even remembered it at all.

For most people who are passionate about cars and driving them, variety is the spice of automotive life. With this in mind, driving only one model of a car for the rest of your life would seem like a miserable sentence to all but the most dedicated automotive fanboys. More »

Filed under: EV/Plug-in, Europe/EU Nissan and General Motors would've been clicking their heels if electric vehicles accounted for one in 500 new cars last year. But in the homeland of big EV builder Renault, not so much. EV sales in France have accounted for less than 0.2 percent of new car sales this year, Bloomberg News reports, citing Les Echos. Automakers like alliance partners Renault and Nissan sold 1,594 EVs through April, according to the wire service. Automakers are hoping that EVs account for as much as 10 percent of vehicle sales in France. Still, 0.2 percent isn't exactly a horror story. Last year, models like the Nissan Leaf battery electric vehicle and Chevrolet Volt extended-range plug-in moved about 17,000 units, or about 0.13 percent of the nearly 13 million light-duty vehicles sold in the U.S. in 2011. That's about one in 750 new cars. That said, automakers were hoping the French would take after the fine citizens of Norway. There, the Nissan Leaf moved 1,000 units...

It's hard to imagine one of the shiny show cars that pack the floors of the annual SEMA show sitting partially stripped in a junkyard, but as these revealing pictures illustrate that is exactly where some of them end up. More »

While to some making a 1960 Dodge Dart Seneca Coupe cooler than when it left the factory might seem fairly easy, in the eyes of Exner-era Mopar devotees like ourselves it's no simple task. Even so, we think whoever built this unique car complete with a turbocharged slant six engine and a floor shift four speed managed the near-impossible. More »

The first 1969 ZL1 Camaro ever built crossed the auction block at last weekend's massive Mecum Spring Classic auction event in Indiana. When the bidding ended the successful buyer had agreed to pay $400,000 for this important piece of muscle car history. More »

When it comes to being convinced of the merits of the half car/half truck hybrid pretty much any argument no matter how ridiculous or far-fetched will work—at least for us. More »

Filed under: Emerging Technologies, BMW, Lightweight There once was a time when BMW only produced a handful of its models in high-performance M guise. There was the M3, the M5, and that was pretty much it. Now, however, it offers M models based on the 1 Series, 3 Series, 5 Series, 6 Series, X5 and X6. And that's only expected to grow. The first on the docket, according to BMW North America CEO (and former M chief) Ludwig Willisch in speaking with TheDetroitBureau.com, will be an M7. The Bavarian automaker has long resisted going down the same road as the Mercedes-Benz S63 AMG and Audi S8, but that's slated to change in the near future. But while the X5 M and X6 M have been hot sellers, Willisch rules out the possibility of M versions of the smaller X1 and X3 crossovers, as well as bringing the M550d xDrive super-diesel sport-wagon (or presumably its crossover counterparts) to North America. Of course BMW could opt to apply a similar sub-M formula to the 7 Series like it's doing with...

When the Indianapolis 500 kicks off on Sunday, many will be watching the series for the first time since Dan Wheldon, last year’s champion, died in the 2011 season finale.

Flashing your high beams to communicate with other drivers was ruled Constitutionally protected speech. (Credit: Mercedes) No good deed goes unpunished, as they say. A man who tried to warn others of a speed trap by flashing his vehicle's headlights at motorists was ticketed by police. But a Florida judge ruled this week that flashing headlights is free speech protected by the First Amendment, according to an article in the Orlando Sentinel. Ryan Kintner was ticketed last year for warning motorists of a speed trap waiting for them down the road. The Lake Mary, Fla., resident was at home when he noticed a police officer with a radar gun near his house, and decided to help out unsuspecting motorists by parking farther up the street from the officer and flashing his lights at oncoming traffic to warn drivers. The police officer instead ticketed Kintner, citing a law that prohibits the flashing of aftermarket emergency lights. However, Kintner fought the ticket, and brought a lawsuit...

SOME things are meant to be. Bentley may have been coerced by eco-regulations into producing a smaller, more efficient engine for its Continental but when the new powerplant is a 500bhp 4.0-litre twin-turbo V8, things really aren't all bad.

Wheels will return to our regular coverage on Tuesday, May 29.

Filed under: EV/Plug-in, Hybrid, MPG The good news? Alt-fuel vehicle sales will rise during the next few years. The bad news? So will their prices. Global sales of hybrids, plug-in hybrids, battery-electric vehicles and other electric-drive variants will jump 30 percent this year and will rise fivefold between 2011 and 2017, says a Dallas-based research firm. Worldwide, low- and zero-emission vehicle sales, which stood at $21.1 billion last year, will reach $27.5 billion in 2012 and then increase to $103.1 billion in 2017, according to MarketsandMarkets. Meanwhile, the number of vehicles sold will rise to 3.53 million in 2017 from 826,800 last year, which is great until a little long division (or a trip to an Excel file) is performed, revealing that the average price of advanced-powertrain vehicles will be $25,556 to $29,198. Either way, hybrids will continue to be the most commonly purchased alt-fuel vehicle during the next few years, the report says. So far, Americans appear to be...

A New Jersey judge ruled today that a person sending a text message cannot be held liable for an ensuing car accident caused when the recipient replied to it, a CBS New York article reported. Shannon Colonna was recently named in a lawsuit brought by two motorcyclists injured in a distracted-driving accident in 2009. David and Linda Kubert each lost part of their left legs when a truck driven by Kyle Best struck their motorcycle. Best pleaded guilty to using a handheld cell phone while driving, careless driving, and failure to maintain a lane, and was sentenced to $775 in fines and community service delivering anti-distracted-driving lectures to 14 high schools, reported The Daily Record. However, in addition to naming Best in their damages lawsuit, they recently added his then-girlfriend Shannon Colonna to the suit. The Kuberts' lawyer argued that by engaging in back-and-forth texting with someone she knew was driving, she encouraged the illegal practice. Colonna's lawyer requested...

Filed under: Spy Photos, Sedan, Performance, Volvo If news of a more powerful Volvo S60 sounds familiar, it's because we just reported on this subject earlier in the week. Now, though, a reader of the same Swedish site that initially broke the news has fired back with a set of spy photos, and we can clearly see that Volvo is indeed making improvements to the S60. As for what exactly those improvements are, your guess is as good as ours. As we reported before, Polestar - the tuning firm that now offers power upgrades for the current range of Volvo products - is said to be handling the more potent S60, with horsepower slated to be somewhere in the 350 to 400 range. Volvo could use a version of the Yamaha-sourced V8 from the XC90, but in this day and age, a boosted version of the turbocharged inline-six sounds more realistic. Of course, a hotter S60 will need more than just power to make it truly competitive with the likes of the BMW M3 and Mercedes-Benz C63 AMG. We're sure that Polestar...

While the ZL1's styling isn't subtle, its performance is defined by Chevy's attention to nuance. A day driving at the Virginia International Raceway revealed a Camaro that evokes blue-ribbon sport coupes like the BMW M3.

Filed under: Hybrid, BMW Anybody out there who knows how to multiply 114 percent by "impressive improvement" gets a prize. In the meantime, we're just going to have to accept the fact that the 2013 BMW ActiveHybrid 7 will get better fuel economy than its predecessor. As it is, we know that the German automaker's 7-series hybrid gets a 3.0-liter inline six-cylinder engine that provides the same horsepower - 315 - as the prior version's V8. In all, the car's hybrid powertrain puts out 348 horsepower and 367 pound-feet of torque, providing a 0-to-60 mile per hour acceleration time of 5.5 seconds. The hybrid can also go as fast as 37 miles per hour in all-electric mode. As for fuel economy, well, what we do know is that the old version got an EPA-rated 20 miles per gallon, the same as BMW's 2012 740Li, and that the new ActiveHybrid 7 gets 14 percent better fuel economy than the new 740Li. Also, the car's fuel economy marks "an impressive improvement" over the 2012 version, according to...

Are you a Top Gear fan? Probably. Have you been spending the last few weekends making a huge chart of Stig-driven lap times of cars around the Top Gear track? If so, then wad up that glitter-covered, elbow macaroni-encrusted, crayon-smeared piece of crap. The nice folks at Boost Labs have made you the definitive Top Gear track infographic. More »

The LeMay museum in Tacoma, Wash., opens on June 2, and about 350 cars, trucks and motorcycles from Harold LeMay’s sprawling collection will be on display at any one time.

While the ZL1’s styling isn’t subtle, its performance is defined by Chevy’s attention to nuance. A day driving at the Virginia International Raceway revealed a Camaro that evokes blue-ribbon sport coupes like the BMW M3.

The coupe continues BMW's tradition of showing one-off designs at the vintage-car event, which it sponsors. - pb:

There's certain things that are so common that they become almost invisible. Like screws. We see screws probably hundreds or thousands of times a day, and there's many, many more hidden from view. They're literally one of the key things that hold our world together, so I think they're due some respect. A great many (possibly most) of the screws you encounter daily show you their heads with a familiar cruciform + or x shape. These are Phillips-head screws, and we can thank Cadillac for making them as popular as they are. More »

The $65 million LeMay Museum in Tacoma, Wash., which opens June 2, hopes to become a new center of car culture in America.

The city, which fired the two previous promoters for its second-annual grand prix, recently approved the hiring of Mr. Andretti's newly formed sports-marketing company.

Automakers are fighting an undeclared, escalating war over in-dash apps, worrying regulators about even more distracted driving.

Mr. Bahar spurred the effort to intoduce six new Lotus models, but encountered little support from the sports car manufacturer's parent, DRB-Hicom.

Sure it’s heavy, and no, it doesn’t come cheap. But the Camaro ZL1 is light on its feet, delivering on-track performance that sets it apart from the average muscle car.

In the beginning, there was a Monday. In the middle, there was a Wednesday. In the end, there was a Friday. A more in-depth Week in Review after the jump....