1973 Camaro/firebird Seat Belt Buckle Exploded Cores on 2040-parts.com

EcoBoost four-cylinder Ford Taurus certified at 32 mpg highway

For the first time since the 1980s, and let's face it, 1991 was the '80s, Ford will stash a four-cylinder engine in the Taurus sedan. With the four pot underhood, the Taurus will get 32 mpg on the highway. Gas mileage has also improved across the rest of the 2013 Taurus line, with the base car and the SHO model certified at 25 mpg or better on the highway.

News watch July 2012: today's auto industry news

Welcome to CAR Magazine's news aggregator as we round up the daily stories in the auto industry. Top tip: news summaries are added from the top hour-by-hour Tuesday 31 July 2012•Porsche SE recorded a first half profit of €1.15bn, in comparison with €149m for the same period in 2011. The enormous jump has come not from directly selling cars, but from the group's investments in Porsche Zwischenholding GmbH and Volkswagen AG (Porsche SE)•Reuters suggests Germany's car market is in recession, but few outside the industry would know it, thanks to a controversial sales practice that inflates official statistics and paints a flattering picture of demand.

Like it or not, autonomous cars are here -- almost

One of the odder things about living in "the future" is that things develop so gradually, hardly any of the really amazing things we're exposed to every day seem amazing or futuristic. If the iPhone had just appeared from nowhere in 2007, there would have been riots, demonstrations and legislation. But since we had a Blackberry first, and dedicated cellphones before that, the iPhone and its progeny were never quite shocking.