For the first time ever, Motor Trend announced the winner of its annual Car of the Year award this afternoon live via webcast. Though the field of 23 contenders was highly competitive this year (follow the jump for a complete list), we guessed immediately that the winner was a Ford as soon as the webcast came online. How'd we know? The fact they were broadcasting the announcement from Ford World Headquarters in Detroit was a not-so-subtle clue. The Fusion, Taurus and Mustang were all in the running, but it was Ford's redesigned mid-size sedan, the Fusion, that took home the coveted Golden Calipers.

In retrospect, the choice is a solid one and not all that surprising. The Fusion was extensively reworked for the 2010 model year and features a new exterior design, new models and new powertrains. Ford offers a four-cylinder model, two strong V6 options and a full-on parallel hybrid variant, which means buyers should have no trouble finding a Fusion that fits their needs. And indeed they have, as the Fusion has already broken its own yearly sales record – with two months left to go.

Like MT, we're big fans of the Fusion here at Autoblog, and even have high hopes that one day it could be the domestic car that knocks the Toyota Camry and Honda Accord from atop their perches as the best selling cars in the States. That said, this Ford still has a long way to go. Toyota has sold nearly twice as many Camry models as the Fusion so far this year, and the Accord and Nissan Altima are still flashing their taillights at Ford's CoTY winner. It's not just demand, as Ford doesn't even have the production capacity at the moment to match Camry sales, and it doesn't help that the Mercury Milan siphons off a few potential Fusion customers, as well.

Nevertheless, this is less about what the Fusion could be in the future than what it is today: the 2010 Motor Trend Car of the Year. Congrats to Ford and the Fusion team.





[Source: Motor Trend]

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The Mythbusters must be closet car fans, because the hour-long show on the Discovery Channel seems to be producing more and more experiments involving automobiles than ever before. Their latest again involves fuel efficiency, this time testing if a dirty car is more fuel efficient than a clean one because of the golf ball-like dimpling effect of the dirt. Turns out dirt doesn't make a difference, but Adam and Jamie went one step further to test if covering a car in actual golf ball-like dimples would improve its fuel efficiency. According to cable's most crack scientists, yes, it will.

The show's team completely covered a last-gen Ford Taurus with modelers clay and figured out that it would achieve about 26 mpg at a constant 65 mph. They then went about adding over 1,000 dimples to the car's exterior. To keep the experiment consistent, all 1,082 dimples removed from the clay exterior were put in a box and set in the back seat so that the car would weigh exactly the same as before dimpling. The theory is that, like a golf ball, the dimples would reduce the car's drag through the air, thus allowing it to travel the same distance at the same speed using less fuel. The result? Over 29 mpg.

Follow the jump to watch the whole episode for yourself, though if you're only interested in watching the dimpled car do it's thing, skip ahead to about 40 minutes in.

[Source: Megavideo]

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In case you missed it this morning, General Motors CEO Fritz Henderson made some big news just one month after the "new" GM emerged from bankruptcy protection.

First of all, Henderson announced that the GM FastLane blog would now be used to solicit feedback on new designs directly from customers. Over the next two years, GM will be launching 25 new models in its four remaining "core" brands (Chevrolet, Cadillac, Buick and GMC).

After the webcast ends, we'll going over to the design dome for a preview of the new large XTS and small ATS models from Cadillac. The latter will slot in below the CTS and be aimed directly at the BMW 3-series with rear- and all-wheel drive. The XTS is expected to be based on a stretched Epsilon II platform.

The biggest bombshell is Henderson's announcement that the "230" marketing campaign that's been floating around for the past week is related to the Volt. The EPA has released a new methodology for determining a draft fuel economy standard for extended-range EVs like the Volt, and under this new procedure, the Volt will have a composite urban fuel economy rating of 230 mpg! On the electric side, the Volt will consume 25 kW/hours per 100 miles. That makes the Volt the first car ever to get a triple digit fuel economy rating.

According to Frank Weber, vehicle chief engineer for the Volt, the number is based on combined electric only driving, and charge sustaining mode with the engine running. He declined to get specific about the proportions, but did say that the urban cycle would be predominantly EV only. The EPA has been studying real world vehicle usage and is developing the formulas to try and provide a representative number of what most customers could expect to achieve. In addition to the composite number, the new EPA stickers will likely also get numbers for mileage in charge sustaining mode and electric efficiency in EV mode.

Stay tuned for more news from this morning's event as it happens.

UPDATE: check out some more detail on the 230 mpg rating.


[Source: General Motors]

The U.S. House of Representatives voted 316 to 109 today in favor of H.R. 3435, a bill that will infuse the Car Allowance Rebate System, or Cash for Clunkers program, with an extra $2 billion. Word came late Thursday evening that the program, which offers consumers a rebate of $3,500 - $4,500 for trading in a "clunker," might be suspended after blowing through its initial funding of $1 billion in less than a week. Lawmakers managed to find the extra money in unused loans for renewable energy systems and pass it through the House today before the body breaks for a five-week-long vacation.

The Cash for Clunkers program will reportedly continue through the weekend and into next week when the funding bill arrives in the Senate where swift passage might not be guaranteed. The original bill that launched the program had many detractors in the Senate, some of who may see this as a second opportunity to either end the program or makes its fuel efficiency requirements even stricter. Even the amount of $2 billion could change – for better or worse – before the bill is approved by the Senate.

What should be obvious to everyone, however, is that if the original funding of $1 billion lasted less than a week, can we expect another $2 billion to extend the program more than another two weeks? The original program was slated to receive $4 billion in funding, but it's now clear that even full funding would've been exhausted far short of C4C's original end date in November. Meanwhile, despite reports from dealers that the program's reimbursement process is a mess, at least we know consumers are out there taking advantage of it.

[Source: CNN Money Autos | Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty]

The car as we know it is being redefined. Hybrids have reintroduced electrons to the driving experience, and the rumble, shake and shimmy of internal combustion engines is being muffled and, in some cases, even silenced by cars like the Toyota Prius, 2011 Chevy Volt and Tesla Roadster.

For us to continue harnessing the energy of combustion under our hoods, we need to go much farther on a gallon of fuel. Enter Volkswagen and the diesel-powered passenger cars it's been selling in the U.S. since the late '70s, the latest of which is the 2009 Jetta TDI. Follow the jump to find out how VW's newest diesel fares against the electrified future of the automobile.


Photos copyright ©2009 John Neff / Weblogs, Inc.

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Click above for high-res gallery of Tesla Roadster v1.5

Last January we landed an exclusive first drive of the Tesla Roadster. We were impressed, but well aware that the particular two-gear model we drove that wet afternoon wasn't identical to the version set to land in customers' hands later in the year. Last week, we were invited back to briefly test drive a genuine production model with the latest transmission and software updates (aka "powertrain 1.5"). Check out our round-two impressions after the jump.

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Ten months ago, Bob Lutz said GM cars would be $5,000 more expensive if the Bush administration got its way with fuel standards by raising fuel economy 4% every year through 2017. Bush didn't get his way, but Congress did with its newly-signed-into-law energy bill that requires automakers have a fleet average of 35 MPG by 2020. According to Lutz, that's going to be even more expensive: "This is going to be a net average cost of $6,000 per vehicle, which will have to be passed onto the consumer."

Lutz said that the premium would actually range from $4,000 to $10,000, and that "it won't come all at once, because 35 mpg doesn't kick in all at once." No one said that saving the world was going to be cheap -- but $6,000 per vehicle? We look forward to figuring out which vehicles will bear the brunt of the plan. Add $10,000 to the price of a ZR-1 and no one's really going to notice. Add $6,000 to the price of a CTS and, depending on how much more expensive its competition gets, things could get interesting. Add $4,000 to the price of an Aveo and you've probably sent a fair number of buyers elsewhere.

[Source: Detroit News]