Buick Motorsports Hat With Grand National Logo on 2040-parts.com

Drivers 'not always watching road'

MOTORISTS typically have their eyes off the road for a tenth of the time they are driving, a study has shown. For 10% of their journey they are eating, reaching for the phone, texting or engaged in other activities that cause concentration to wander away from what is happening beyond the windscreen. Predictably, teenagers who had recently passed their test were most likely to crash or experience a near-miss as a result of being distracted, according to US researchers.

One Lap of the Web: Happy birthday, John DeLorean, a legally imported Nissan Skyline, Amphicar for sale and the Righini Collection

-- Bust out the candles: American success story, visionary futurist and import/export whiz John DeLorean was born this day in 1925. Everyone knows about his battle to launch the DeLorean Motor Company, but the man behind the stainless-steel legend had a long career as a brilliant engineer that included time at Chrysler, Packard and General Motors. And while we might not all be driving DeLoreans today, we're still talking about both the man and the company -- which is pretty impressive when you think about it.

Toyota outlines quality reforms; chief bows out of U.S. hearings

Conceding that breakneck expansion led to Toyota Motor Corp.'s current recall crisis, president Akio Toyoda outlined reforms meant to get quality back on track, including more active use of the car's so-called black box crash data recorder. Toyoda, grandson of the carmaker's founder, also indicated he won't sit before Congressional hearings into the quality lapses that have triggered recalls of more than 8.5 million vehicles since last fall. Yoshimi Inaba, the head of Toyota's U.S.