Arias Pistons 12.5:1 Compression 82mm Bore Honda B-series on 2040-parts.com

New options make Prius pricey

High-tech features and luxury options will push the redesigned Toyota Prius into new territory--namely, $30,000-plus. The 2010 Prius hybrid will offer options found on luxury cars: systems that automatically park the car in a parallel parking space and slow the vehicle when a crash is likely. But Toyota is aware of a new competitor--the 2010 Honda Insight, a hybrid that is a little smaller and expected to be less expensive than the Prius.

The Woodward Dream Cruise with Ian Callum

Try describing the Woodward Dream Cruise—a pulsing expression of Amer-ican automotive enthusiasm condensed into an endless, eight-lane traffic jam—and your audience will fall into one of two groups: The ones who shrug it off as inexplicable gasoline-fueled hysteria, or the ones who simply embrace it as the day-long automotive flash mob it is. Ian Callum, principal designer for Jaguar, falls firmly in the second camp. That's right.

How safe are new minicars?

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) recently tested a total of 11 minicars in its relatively new small-overlap crash test, and the Chevrolet Spark was the only one to earn an Acceptable rating. The small-overlap crash test was instituted in 2012 with the goal of better replicating real-life car crashes, most of which don't follow the pattern of traditional government crash tests. Instead of a car hitting a stationary object with 100 percent of its front making contact, the small-overlap test examines how a car behaves in a frontal impact at 40 mph where only a quarter of the car's front hits an object.