Timken 516008 Rear Wheel Bearing-wheel Bearing Kit on 2040-parts.com

One Lap of the Web: Packards -- Ask the man who knows way too much about one

-- For some light Wednesday reading, here's more information than you ever wanted to know about Packard. It includes the horrible neoclassics that plagued the 1970s, and the 1995 revival of the Packard name that attempted to stick a shortened rendition of the famous Packard grille in front of a 440-hp V12, all wrapped in a shape that looked like a melted Twix, as shown above. Our august associate editor Graham Kozak owns a Packard, so he could have filled us in on the details.

Ford tops GM in February sales, steers U.S. industry to 13 percent gain

Ford Motor Co. led the U.S. industry to a 13 percent sales gain in February while topping General Motors in monthly sales for the first time in 12 years.

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.