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Chrysler and Nissan cancel vehicle-swapping deal

Chrysler and Nissan are canceling their 2008 deals to build vehicles for each other, the automakers announced Wednesday afternoon. Chrysler was to provide Nissan with a full-sized truck, based on the Dodge Ram, starting in 2011. It would have been a replacement for the Nissan Titan.

Alfa Romeo MiTo

This is Alfa Romeo's latest compact car, the MiTo. The new car draws its name from the abbreviations of two Italian cities: Milan, the city that brought the car's style into being, and Turin, which will be responsible for its industrial production. The first new Alfa Romeo to be built since the 8C Competizione, the MiTo borrows many characteristic element from its larger 'halo' sibling: the shape of the frameless side windows, the distinctive frontal treatment, the shape of the headlights and the LED tail lights.

How safe are new minicars?

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) recently tested a total of 11 minicars in its relatively new small-overlap crash test, and the Chevrolet Spark was the only one to earn an Acceptable rating. The small-overlap crash test was instituted in 2012 with the goal of better replicating real-life car crashes, most of which don't follow the pattern of traditional government crash tests. Instead of a car hitting a stationary object with 100 percent of its front making contact, the small-overlap test examines how a car behaves in a frontal impact at 40 mph where only a quarter of the car's front hits an object.