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Toyota and Mercedes-Benz are top global car brands

Toyota & Mercedes-Benz are the Top Global Automotive Brands 2011 Interbrand, a branding consultancy, delivers a report on the world’s brands every year, and in 2011, despite recall woes and the devastation of the Japanese Tsunami, Toyota leads the automotive brands, with luxury car maker Mercedes-Benz just behind. Interbrand uses three measures to gauge how effective a brand is – performance of branded product, the brands ability to secure earnings and the role of the brand in purchasing decisions – to come up with a chart of the top 100 world brands. At the top of the tree are companies like Coca Cola, IBM, Microsoft and Google, but car brands do well with Toyota, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Honda, VW, and Ford all making it in to the top 50.

2015 BMW M4 Convertible debuts: drop-top fun priced from $73,425

The 2015 BMW M4 Convertible made its official debut at the New York auto show yesterday. While the details of the high-octane hardtop didn't exactly catch us off-guard (see our full breakdown here), we now know how much it'll cost to feel the wind in your hair as you launch from 0-60 mph in 4.4 seconds: $73,425, to start. Complete pricing will be available closer to the M4 Convertible's sale date, which is “late summer” 2014, according to BMW.

One Lap of the Web: More McLaren P1 madness, Nissan's cute Le Mans engine and get weird in a Subaru SVX coupe

-- We drove the 2015 McLaren P1. We liked the 2015 McLaren P1. And in that sense, we've very much like Jay Leno, who toured the hypercar's hyper-futuristic factory in Woking, England before putting it through its paces on the track.