Subaru Impreza 2012 Sedan Rear Cargo Tray on 2040-parts.com

Car design: a reader laments current styling trends

No Sonny, They Don’t Make ‘Em Like They Did In My Day Actually, back then, if they could be bothered to make them at all, they hardly ever made them properly, and much of what got made properly wasn’t worth the bother. So that’s nostalgia for you. But a post a while back from the clear-sighted Wittgenfrog echoed my own thoughts.

AC Cobra Mk VI to show at Monaco

AC is due to show the AC Cobra MK VI at the Top Marques Show in Monaco Despite being a UK car maker, AC is to build the new Cobra MK VI in Germany, at Gullwing GmbH, which gives a clue to the car’s unique feature – a removable hard top with gullwing doors. The AC Cobra has a long history, and is one of the most sought after replica cars on the market (which is hardly surprising considering the cost of an original Cobra), and is said to be single handedly responsible for the UK’s national 70mph speed limit, which was brought in after some extremely high-speed incidents on the new M1, where AC was testing its cars. Why bother with a test track when you have 100 miles of fresh, straight tarmac courtesy of H.M.

Obama vows to help rebuild industry to compete, win

President Barack Obama on Tuesday vowed to hold U.S. automakers accountable for "bad practices" but promised to help create a "retooled, re-imagined auto industry." In remarks to a joint session of Congress, Obama gave a sobering assessment of the nation's ills--mainly economic--but said: "We will rebuild, we will recover, and the United States of America will emerge stronger than before." About midway through the speech, the president said: "As for our auto industry, everyone recognizes that years of bad decision-making and a global recession have pushed our automakers to the brink. We should not, and will not, protect them from their own bad practices.