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Smart car inventor Nicolas Hayek dies

Nicolas Hayek, the engineer and industrialist who founded the Swiss watch company Swatch and brought the world the Smart car, died on June 28 of heart failure at his office in Switzerland. He was 82. Hayek saved the Swiss watch industry from lower-priced Asian competition in the early 1980s by offering colorful, inexpensive Swatch timepieces that he backed with equally colorful marketing.

Daimler considers building Mercedes C-class in U.S.

Daimler AG could move some production of the Mercedes-Benz C-class to the United States from Germany, a German newspaper reported Wednesday. The Stuttgarter Zeitung said some C-class production could be transferred to the carmaker's plant in Vance, Ala., from Sindelfingen, near Stuttgart, as part of a wider production shakeup planned by Daimler to reduce costs. In the future, the C-class sedan could be built in three locations: Bremen, Germany; Vance, Ala., and in China, the newspaper said.

Concept Car of the Week: Honda HP-X (1984)

20 years after producing its first production car, Honda grew enough confidence to challenge European sports cars on their own turf. Going straight for the jugular, they commissioned the famous Italian carrozeria Pininfarina to design a mid-engined two-seater concept for the 1984 Turin Motor show. The HP-X, standing for Honda Pininfarina eXperimental, had a very clean composition divided in three distinct elements: the matte black lower, the white ribbed body and the completely transparent canopy on top.