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Tesla pays off its government loans

Tesla paid off the last of its $465 million government loans May 22, nine years ahead of schedule, thus outperforming most U.S. college graduates and the vast majority of American homeowners. Tesla used funds from a stock offering to finish the loan with a whopping bank transfer of $451.8 million Wednesday, pointing out that it was “…the only American car company to have fully repaid the government.” Apparently no one at Tesla was even born when Lee Iacocca paid off Chrysler's $1.2-billion government bailout ahead of schedule back in 1983.

News watch Feb 2010: today's auto industry news

Tuesday 2 February 2010• Spyker has outlined its plans for Saab, which include a new 'all Saab' 9-3 to be launched in 2012. Read the full story here (Saab)• EuroNCAP has named the VW Golf as 'Safest Car of 2009' after ranking all the 33 models it crashed last year (Volkswagen) • Toyota's massive recall to fix fault accelerator pedals could cost the company £1.25bn in lost output and sales (BBC)• Ford will unveil an Edge SUV at next week's Chicago auto show with a turbocharged four-cylinder Ecoboost engine, but the extensive visual mid-life facelift has been made economically possible thanks to Ford's worldwide consolidation of its model ranges (Detroit News) • Toyota has denied that it ignored warnings and acted slowly over reports of unintended acceleration in its vehicles (Detroit News) Monday 1 February 2010• Lotus's vehicle engineering director Roger Becker announced his retirement today. Becker, 64, joined Lotus in 1966, worked alongside Colin Chapman and helped develop every single model since (Group Lotus)• Tata Motors' total sales last month hit 65,478 vehicles – a rise of 77% over January 2009.

One Lap of the Web: Racing heroes and ugly cars

-- Gary Bettenhausen finished 10th at Indy in 1971. But that's because he stopped his car, got out and pulled driver Mike Mosley out of his burning car, saving his life. Bettenhausen, who passed away last week at the age of 72, finished the race in 10th place but really came in first.