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Local Motors 'Design Our Car' competition opens

Local Motors has opened its first-ever ‘Design Our Car' competition, which encourages collaboration within the manufacturing community. The open-source automaker is providing two of its Rally Fighter cars, one of which will be built at the company's micro-factory in Arizona while the other will be built live in the Emerging Technology Center at September's International Manufacturing Technology Show (IMTS) in Chicago. Ideas from the design and engineering community are being sought to help design and select a skin for the Rally Fighter that will be built by the Local Motors team this spring.

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).

Ford sends Mustang, Edge to Europe

Ford plans to export the Mustang to Europe, and it will likely be the next generation of the famous pony car due within a couple of years. It has also shown redesigned compact and full-size vans it will sell in the United States by 2014. The automaker also showed a lightly restyled Fiesta and a high-performance ST model that go on sale in Europe later this year.