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Crashing the Pixar Motorama car show

The animated film studio Pixar sits behind newly aged brick walls on a sprawling campus in the East Bay that looks and seems a little like Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory, especially since you can't get inside. But we've been inside, and it is a pretty wonderful place. On July 12 Pixar's Jay Ward, guardian of the "Cars" franchise and all the wheeled wonders that entails, organized the latest Pixar Motorama, the greatest car show you'll never see.

Saab shutdown would doom new 9-5, 9-3 models

The new Saab 9-5 sedan and a proposed replacement for the 9-3 will be killed off if General Motors Co. winds down its Swedish subsidiary, AutoWeek has learned. The new 9-5, a longer-wheelbase version of the Opel Insignia and the Buick Regal, is poised to go down in the annals of automotive history as a major rarity--a design that was fully tooled for production yet never got built.

Ford gains ground in customer perception

The Ford brand gained ground in consumers' minds this year as Toyota slipped, though the Japanese juggernaut still leads the pack by a slight margin. Over the last two years, Ford climbed 35 percentage points while Toyota dropped 46 percentage points, according to the latest survey from Consumer Reports. During this time, Ford (144) moved within three points of Toyota (147).