2014 Beijing Motor Show: weird and wonderful Chinese cars

The Chinese auto industry might not be the most important in the world yet, but it’s getting there. It’s already the top market for a large number of top-tier brands like Mercedes-Benz, and the industry has progressed to the point where companies including Nissan are setting up brands specifically to cater to the needs of Chinese buyers. But as far as Chinese brands go, things are very much a work in progress.

GM posts $2.5 billion profit, led by North America

General Motors on Thursday posted a profit of $2.5 billion for the second quarter, led by strong results in North America. GM's net income for the April-through-June period nearly doubled from $1.3 billion in the year-earlier quarter. It was GM's sixth consecutive quarterly profit since exiting bankruptcy in mid-2009.

First Sight: Mercedes-Benz SL

The new high-tech, low weight Mercedes SL roadster receives its official global unveil next week in Detroit but Car Design News got an early peek of the final production car and had a chat with its designers at Mercedes' US advanced design studio in Carlsbad, California back in November. "We want to get back to clean, long-lasting design," director of Mercedes global advanced design and SL project leader, Steffen Kohl told CDN at the exclusive preview of the sixth-generation model. "So the new SL is long, sleek and still full of tension in the feature lines but less wedgy." In a short presentation Kohl felt all SLs became successfully iconic in their times because they followed two key rules – ‘sensuality' and ‘cleanness' – but alluded that the first rule may have been lost in more recent eras.