Ford Focus (2012) - the best-selling car in the world

Ford's Focus has overtaken the Toyota Corolla in the sales charts. Unremarkable, you might say? Not when you realise this is the global sales mantle, making the Focus the best-selling car name on the planet in the first half of the year.

Early cars, fashion on display at the Petersen

Automotivated, a new exhibit at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles, traces the evolution of clothes worn in cars--from the bulky circus-tent stuff people had to wear to keep from freezing to death in the jangly, open-topped conveyances of 100 years ago, up to the height of the European Concours in the 1920s and '30s, when what you and your date wore was just as important to winning best of show as the styling of your Delahaye/Delage/Talbot Lago. “In the earliest days of the automobile, you were sitting on the car, you weren't sitting in it,” said Leslie Kendall, curator at the Petersen. So the first section of the exhibit shows people (mannequins dressed as people) in heavy, practical overcoats, scarves and goggles.

Kia shows off rear-drive Stinger again before Detroit auto show

Kia dropped another teaser shot of its GT4 Stinger, headed for the Detroit auto show next week. It's an overhead view, giving us a good look at the fender flares. The GT4 will house a 2.0-liter turbocharged, direct injected four-cylinder, which delivers 315 hp.