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Center stack is new high-stakes battleground; showdown with safety regulators looms

For auto suppliers and gadget companies eager to get a piece of the auto industry, the hottest chunk of vehicle real estate now is the center stack. That corridor of interior space, running from the driver's right hip up through the center of the cockpit to the bottom of the windshield, has become a California gold rush of opportunity. But it is less so for traditional suppliers of molded plastics, cables, levers, buttons and radios.

One Lap of the Web: The lost F-Type, a velvet Panamera and Lutz on being king

We spend a lot of time on the Internet -- pretty much whenever we're not driving, writing about or working on cars. Since there's more out there than we'd ever be able to cover, here's our daily digest of car stuff on the Web you may not otherwise have heard about. -- Long before there was a Jaguar F-Type, there was the XJ41, originally conceived to be a lightweight successor to the XKE.

Mercedes-Benz G-class to get V12 power

Mercedes-Benz has slyly revealed a lightly facelifted version of the 33-year-old G-class prior to its planned public premiere at the Beijing motor show next month. The reworked version of the German carmaker's iconic military-grade SUV, planned to go on sale in European markets in June with North American deliveries slated to begin by the end of this year, can be seen in the background of an official photograph of the facelifted GLK posted on the Mercedes-Benz media Web site. Among the subtle changes made to the G-class's classic square exterior is a restyled grille with three prominent slats in place of the older model's seven slats, new headlamp inserts with horizontally mounted LED running lights and redesigned mirror housings.