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Toyota and Mercedes-Benz are top global car brands

Toyota & Mercedes-Benz are the Top Global Automotive Brands 2011 Interbrand, a branding consultancy, delivers a report on the world’s brands every year, and in 2011, despite recall woes and the devastation of the Japanese Tsunami, Toyota leads the automotive brands, with luxury car maker Mercedes-Benz just behind. Interbrand uses three measures to gauge how effective a brand is – performance of branded product, the brands ability to secure earnings and the role of the brand in purchasing decisions – to come up with a chart of the top 100 world brands. At the top of the tree are companies like Coca Cola, IBM, Microsoft and Google, but car brands do well with Toyota, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Honda, VW, and Ford all making it in to the top 50.

First Sight: BMW 3 Series

With the 7 Series of 2001, Z4 of 2002, X3, 5 and 6 Series of 2003, and 1 Series earlier this year, the current E46 3 Series is the last (X5 excepted) 'old school' BMW in production. These first official pictures show BMW's fifth generation E90 3 Series which replaces this car and completes the new design strategy for the main series BMW range under Design Director Chris Bangle. Now with a smaller sibling in the range, the 3 Series is no longer BMW's entry level car although it shares much of its platform with the 1 Series and it is expected to continue to account for about half of BMW's total sales.

Japan quake threatens to delay U.S. output of Nissan Leaf EV

The March 11 earthquake in Japan could force Nissan to delay the start of U.S. production of its Leaf electric vehicle, now scheduled for late 2012. “The earthquake is putting us in a very difficult situation,” said Hideaki Watanabe, head of Nissan's Global Zero Emission Vehicle Business Unit.