Concours d'LeMons: Living a different kind of automotive lifestyle

The “winner” was perhaps the worst car I'd ever seen. The 1980 French KV Mini looked like something made in a backyard by a 10-year-old. This thing was not going to pass government standards in any country in the world.

Official: Aston Martin gets its hands on Mercedes AMG engines & Electronic Architecture

Aston Martin & AMG confirm they’re getting in bed together Back in December we reported that Aston Martin had new investment from Investindustrial and wondered if that would mean – thanks to an existing relationship between Investindustrial and AMG – if we’d see Aston Martin finally getting access to AMG’s engines and platforms. By May, things had moved on and it was clear that Aston Martin and AMG were in talks for Aston Martin to get access to their engines for the next generation of AML’s cars. Now those talks have borne fruit and AMG and AML have signed a letter of intent for Aston Martin to “access significant Mercedes-AMG GmbH and Mercedes-Benz Cars’ resources, allowing the development of bespoke V8 powertrains and the use of certain components of electric/electronic (e/e) architecture.” Interestingly, there’s no talk of V12 engines – which could mean Aston Martin are going to move from the current Ford V12 for the DB9 and Vanquish to a powerful V8 from AMG – and nor is there talk of sharing platforms.

U.S. Transportation Department opens probe of 2010 Toyota Prius brakes

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said Thursday that it is opening a formal investigation of the 2010 Toyota Prius Hybrid to determine whether the vehicle suffers momentary loss of braking capability while traveling over bumpy surfaces. NHTSA, an agency that is part of the U.S. Department of Transportation, has received 124 consumer complaints, including four reports of crashes.