Jay Leno wins car award from Concorso Italiano

He started as an understudy and has become an icon, and with his last taping of the Tonight Show hours away, Jay Leno has secured another car honor. The Concorso Italiano, which plays host to a prestigious car event before the Pebble Beach concours, announced that Leno is being honored with its La Bella Macchina hall of fame award for contributions to the car world.

Value-Added New Focus Keeps Asking Price In Check

WITH the launch of Ford’s new Focus just around the corner, the Blue Oval firm has announced that prices will start from £13,995 - the same as today’s Focus, with top Titanium and Titanium X versions costing £100 less than the outgoing equivalents. The new Focus range retains a six-series line-up of Studio (from £13,995), Style (£16,795), Zetec (£18,295), Zetec S (£20,045), Titanium (£19,795) and Titanium X (£21,795). According to Ford, the new Focus builds on its reputation for technology, which since 2011 has featured automated parallel parking, Active City Stop low-speed collision avoidance, Traffic Sign Recognition to monitor and record road signs and Blind Spot Information System, as optional equipment.

Ram introduces CNG-powered pickup

Aside from the Honda Civic Natural Gas, compressed-natural-gas-powered vehicles have usually been converted after the fact, generally for fleet use. Chrysler is hoping to carve out a niche in the corporate-pickup segment by selling a factory-built CNG Ram 2500 that can seamlessly switch over to gasoline operation when the natural-gas tanks run dry. The twin 4.6-cubic-foot CNG tanks (which store the equivalent of 18.2 gallons of gas) take up a section of the bed, while an eight-gallon gasoline tank provides fuel during start-up and then reserve capacity when the compressed tanks are tapped out, allowing the bruiser a measure of operational flexibility.