Minn Kota Transducer Mounting Kit Mkr-15 Marine Boat on 2040-parts.com

Toyota to unlock secrets of black-box recorders

Reacting to criticism that data from black-box crash recorders in its vehicles can be accessed only by the company, Toyota Motor Corp. is moving to ship hundreds of data-decoding machines to the United States and make them commercially available to help diagnose vehicle problems. The devices, known as event data recorders, are similar to the black boxes on airliners and record information such as vehicle and engine speed in the seconds before a crash.

Reuss: GM considering 'something really fun' for Buick

Buick dealers still salivating over the Riviera concept that General Motors unveiled at last month's Shanghai auto show should take a deep breath: There's little chance that the flashy coupe will ever grace a Buick showroom. But they should view the Riviera -- which GM says points to the brand's design direction -- as a signal that GM is serious about adding pizazz to the Buick lineup now that the 110-year-old brand, which barely survived GM's bankruptcy four years ago, is getting comfortable in its born-again skin. "We've very carefully built Buick back to a brand that has respect," GM North America President Mark Reuss told Automotive News.

2013 Fiat 500 gets modest turbo model

Fiat is adding a midlevel model, the 500 Turbo, to its U.S. lineup for 2013. The car will get a turbocharged 1.4-liter MultiAir engine rated at 135 hp and 150 lb-ft of torque.