Toyota fails to land 'top safety pick' rating in insurance-group study

For the first time in three years, none of Toyota Motor Corp.'s vehicles received “top safety pick” ratings from an insurance group, as tougher criteria pared the number of selections from 94 last year to 27 this year. Ford Motor Co. led all automakers for the second year in a row with six 2010-model top safety picks from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, including four from Volvo, a brand that's being sold.

New Aston Martin Vanquish Configurator now live

The online configurator for the new (2013) Aston Martin Vanquish has now gone live on Aston Martin’s web site. The reveal of the new Aston Martin Vanquish has only just happened, but in 2012 that’s not good enough for a supercar – you need to have a configurator to play with. So if you’ve got a spare half an hour at work today (or even if you haven’t) you can go to Aston Martin’s website and play with the configurator for the new Vanquish to your heart’s content.

Book captures Ford's Farley launching F-bomb at GM

A new book about the Detroit auto industry rebuilding itself is showing that old rivalries are still alive and kicking in the Motor City. In Once Upon a Car by Bill Vlasic, Ford Motor Co.'s marketing chief lobs an F-bomb at General Motors. "We're going to beat on them, and it's going to be fun," the book quotes Jim Farley, Ford's group vice president of global marketing, sales and service, as saying.