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Insurance group lists its Top Safety Picks

After increasing its standards for 2011 models, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety says that 66 vehicles--more than double the 2010 total--rate as best in the industry at protecting passengers from front, side, rollover and rear crashes. Only 27 vehicles qualified last year after the group, funded by the insurance industry, required that vehicles pass a roof-strength test to earn a good rating, claiming that stronger roofs would reduce the risk of serious or fatal injury by 50 percent in a rollover accident. The most mentioned carmakers on the 2011 list are Hyundai/Kia and Volkswagen/Audi, both with nine vehicles to get the Top Safety Pick designation.

NYC carriages about to go extinct?

If you love taking horse-drawn carriage rides in New York City, you best hurry -- they might be replaced with new horseless carriages by next year. At the New York auto show Florida-based car restoration firm The Creative Workshop introduced an eight-passenger electric horseless carriage designed to replace today's horse-drawn carriages. The company says its car blends “early 20th-century style, nostalgia and romance with 21st century eco-technology, comfort and safety,” calling the Horseless eCarriage the first brass-era-type car in more than 100 years.

Land Rover unveils Discovery Vision Concept in New York

Land Rover revealed its Discovery Vision Concept at the USS Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum Monday night ahead of the New York auto show. Land Rover says it's a vision of future Discovery vehicles, the first of which is due in 2015. The Discovery is now sold as the LR4 in the United States, but Land Rover says it will eventually shift the name back to "Discovery" for the North American market -- that's what we knew it as when it first made landfall, anyway.