68234604af Chrysler Adaptive Cruise Control on 2040-parts.com

Film Friday: A Wonderful New World of Fords has descended from the heavens!

In a day when every automaker seems to be eager to latch on to the smallest details -- a few pounds of weight shaved here and there, some silly feature designed to keep you and your family protected in an accident, a flashier infotainment setup -- to sell their product, this 1960 Ford spot is a breath of fresh air. There's none of this oh-so-carefully hedged “our cars are pretty OK!” nonsense in this spot for the 1960 Thunderbird, Falcon and Galaxie. There's nary a world about fuel economy (OK, one mention -- the Falcon supposedly gets up to 30 mpg).

Marchionne's dilemma: To sell or not to sell Alfa to Volkswagen?

Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne's self-confidence has helped him tackle problems that lesser executives would duck, but he may have met his match. In a public test of Marchionne's faith in his own turnaround strategy, in September Volkswagen Chairman Ferdinand Piech bluntly announced that he wants to buy Alfa Romeo. Piech was suggesting that VW--and only VW--could transform Fiat's perennial money-losing brand into a real moneymaker.

Audi RS5 TDI Concept gets electric turbo and 380bhp

The Audi RS5 TDI Concept (pictured) gets an electric turbo It’s two years since Audi revealed it was working on an electric turbo to be used in a twin-turbo setup, with the electric turbo able to offer boost pressure from much lower down the rev range than a normal turbo. That has turned in to the Audi RS5 TDI Concept, where Audi has replaced the normal RS5‘s V8 with a 3.0 litre TDI engine with a small electric turbo for low rev work and a bigger turbo to do the higher rev stuff. The electric turbo works from the off to provide maximum torque of 553lb/ft from just 1250rpm, before the bigger normal turbo takes over at 3,000rpm to continue the boost.