Stack St918052 St883-1 Adapter 1 on 2040-parts.com

Who's Where: Martin Smith to retire, succeeded by Joel Piaskowski as Ford Europe head of design

Martin Smith, head of Ford of Europe design for the last 10 years, will retire at the end of this year, before which he will work on a project to study the future direction of the company's global design direction. He will be replaced by current head of strategic concepts group, Joel Piaskowski on 1 July. Smith (64) first joined Ford back in 2004, leaving General Motors as director of design for Opel/Vauxhall.

GM posts $7.6 billion profit for 2011

General Motors on Thursday posted a $7.6 billion profit for 2011, while recording its smallest quarterly profit of the year in the fourth quarter. Net income for the October-through-December period fell 7 percent from the year-earlier period to $472 million, as a $562 million loss in Europe--the steepest of the year there--weighed on the automaker's bottom line. North American earnings nearly doubled.

Nissan's marketing pays off, so it spends more

Aggressive incentives and ad spending have helped Nissan North America Inc. rack up a bigger sales gain this year than Asian rivals Toyota, Honda and Hyundai-Kia. Now Nissan plans more of the same.