We'd expected BMW's compact executive contender to be good, but we didn't expect it to be this good. In recent years, the best compact execs have been separated by the smallest of margins. The BMW, especially the 2.0-litre diesel version recommended here, has raised standards more than we thought possible.

Whatever your priorities, it delivers. The 320d is every bit as sharp as you'd expect of a BMW. It's still the keen driver's choice, yet it combines this driver appeal with an impressively supple ride.

Refinement, however, is the area in which BMW has really rewritten the rules. This used to be Mercedes' patch, but now BMW is the quietest car in the class, making it the preferred choice for any journey you plan to tackle. An empty road, a city at rush hour, a long haul on the motorway ? we'd take the BMW every time.

Any 3 Series is good, but the 320d is the pick of the crop. The 163bhp 2.0-litre diesel hits the sweet spot of performance, fuel economy, low emissions and refinement. There's little reason to spend extra to obtain one of the more powerful engine options.

General Motors (GM) lost $4.8 billion in the fourth quarter, bringing total losses in a dismal year to $8.6 billion, the automaker said Thursday.

Those losses amount to $8.45 a share in the fourth quarter and $15.13 a share for the year, compared with a loss of 18 cents in last year's fourth quarter and income of $4.92 a share for the full year 2004.

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"2005 was one of the most difficult years in GM's history, " GM Chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner said. "It was a year in which two significant fundamental weaknesses in our North American operations were fully exposed ? our huge legacy costs and our inability to adjust structural costs in line with falling revenue."

He said companies need to manufacture "a product that's relevant" and that his administration has discussed new fuel technologies with the nation's top two automakers.

"As these automobile manufacturers compete for market share and use technology to try to get consumers to buy their product, they also will be helping America become less dependent on foreign sources of oil," Bush said.

A photographic survey taken from the ground reveals a parking lot across the highway from the beach, and little else.

There are no bus stops, lamp posts or any other permanent structures in the area.

There was no evidence of any recent change in the landscaping that might suggest a cover up.

Considering the car was estimated to be hurtling at 90 MPH on nothing but a ten-foot cushion of air, it's no wonder there was no trace of it left.

According to media reports this week, Ford hopes to have something to show by 2008 as part of the company's celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Model T. The desired end product reportedly will be a fully recyclable car based somewhat on the Model U concept from 2003. Its recyclability will stem from the fact that it will be completely easy to disassemble; all parts not reusable in automaking will be biologically based materials.

Ford is said to have put together a team of its most inspired personnel to pursue the green-car idea. Company sources have indicated that the project may include vehicle parts as well as the actual cars themselves in a pursuit of more lightweight, safe, strong, cheap, and environmentally sustainable vehicles.

What this means to you: Eat your heart out, Toyota. Ford is going for perhaps the ultimate statement in environmentally conscious automotive design.

CarHarbor wants to tap into the everyday frustrations we all face when it comes to parking our cars. We are developing an online tool that can resolve those frustrations. CarHarbor should demonstrate that reasonable people can cooperate to benefit their community and themselves.

We want to engage you in this process so that our solutions can be highly responsive to the diverse set of parking problems people face. Our initial focus is on San Francisco, where we're based, but our interests are national if not global in nature too.

Despite years of comeback plans and reorganization blueprints, GM and Ford, the pillars of the U.S. auto industry, have decided they have no choice but to shrink their way back to profitability in the face of the unrelenting pressures of a global market. Although Chrysler has had some success in turning around its business, auto experts today focus less on the Big Three and more on what some call the Big Six. Toyota Motor Corp., Honda Motor Co. and Nissan Motor Co. have made steady inroads, adding new U.S. plants and hiring thousands of autoworkers into nonunion jobs.

Ford Chairman William C. Ford Jr. said the company has been guided for too long by "business as usual," which he blamed for the company's over-reliance on sales of sport-utility vehicles. "We need to change the business model that's existed for many decades at Ford," he said.

Ford, the nation's second-largest automaker, employs about 123,000 workers in its North American operations. That division lost $1.6 billion pretax in 2005, precipitating its second financial crisis in five years. Ford's U.S. market share declined to 17.4 percent last year, down from 24 percent six years ago.

Driver-Monitoring System
Instead of just watching for hazards on the road, Toyota's latest precrash safety system is turning its attention to the most likely cause of an accident: you. This spring, Lexus models in Japan will be available with a camera mounted on the steering column that uses facial-recognition software to determine whether you're watching the road. If not, and the front-mounted radar sees you're getting too close to something, it will flash a light, then beep and tap the brakes if you persist in rubbernecking.

Spot Detection
To prevent drivers from smashing into what they can't see, two as-yet-unnamed automakers will include Valeo Raytheon's blind-spot detection in 2007 models. The system's 2.4-GHz radar sensors will be mounted in the rear bumper and won't be affected by the elements. When a vehicle is in a driver's blind spot, an LED in the sideview mirror will light up. If the driver turns the steering wheel anyway, a beep will warn him of the hidden danger.

An onboard radar system, automated acceleration and braking controls, and a night-vision display are among the features that Mercedes describes as the most advanced available in cars today.

The Distronic system's 24-GHz radar sensors initiate the car's acceleration and braking according to a preset speed and distance from a car in front of you. While creeping along in stop-and-go traffic, I didn't have to apply either the brake or gas.

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The function took some getting used to. After setting the system to maintain a distance of about 170 feet from cars in front of me, it took a lot of nerve not to apply the brake manually when I was humming along at over 90 mph and saw that traffic had come to a dead stop just a few hundred feet away. But in time I learned to trust the Distronic system enough to force myself to keep my feet flat on the floor while the car gently decelerated from high speeds to a dead stop -- without plowing into the car ahead of me.

Originally created in January, 2000 by Sean Sosik-Hamor, the Trunkmonkey concept had been floating around the labs for quite a while before anyone actually decided to implement it. Consisting solely of a trained monkey and a steady source of ice cold high-quality import ale or lager, the Trunkmonkey lives in the trunk of any vehicle and helps to automate weight transfer at the rear wheels during spirited driving maneuvers.

Originally developed for the Subaru Impreza, WRX, Forester, and Legacy, the Trunkmonkey has been adapted to many other platforms

The federal Energy Information Administration said strong gasoline demand during December may be the biggest factor behind the recent jump in gasoline prices, which climbed 8.9 cents over the past week to a national average of $2.33 a gallon on Monday, up 53 cents from a year ago.

?For now, it does not appear that retail gasoline prices will average below $2 per gallon anytime soon, but barring a bumpy transition to the new gasoline formulations taking place this year or a major supply disruption, nor do we expect to see $3 per gallon either,? the EIA said in a weekly review of the oil market.

General Motors Corp., whose U.S. sales fell 4.3 percent last year, said it will cut the prices on about 80 percent of its cars and trucks.

Prices will reduced on all Buick, Chevrolet and GMC models and most Pontiac vehicles, said Mark LaNeve, GM's head of North American marketing, in a statement today. The price cuts take effect tomorrow. Combined with reductions made on some models in August, the changes cover 90 percent of GM's volume, LaNeve said.

Although the show car isn't a runner, it was designed on the Gallardo's platform with production feasibility in mind. If the response to the concept is amply enthusiastic, look for the Miura as a 2008 or 2009 model with a 6.5-liter version of the Murcielago's V-12 engine. While the original Miura's motor was transversely mounted, the new one would have a more conventional longitudinal configuration. Expect more than 650 hp and a price north of $350,000 if and when the Miura appears.

The MIT concept car is a complete re-think of vehicle technology. For a start, there is no engine, at least in the traditional sense. The power comes from devices called wheel robots. "These are self-contained wheel units that have electric motors inside," says Mr Chin. "The interesting thing is that the wheel can turn a full 360 degrees so you can have omni-directional wheel movements. You can rotate the car while you're moving, any direction can be front or back and you can do things like crabbing or translate sideways. It's almost like you imagine yourself driving a computer chair."

The wheel robots, complete with their own suspension, remove the need for a drive shaft and even the engine block, freeing up designers to make new use of the space in the car.

"Essentially the car will comprise four wheel-robots plus a customisable chassis," says Chin. "The frame can be built specifically for each customer."

Add wafer-thin, programmable displays that cover the interior and exterior of the car like a layer of paint, and you have a vehicle that can be customised at will. "You can imagine signalling being not just a static signal light but something more dynamic," says Mr Chin, who suggests the words "reversing" or "turning left" could roll across the car's body to declare the driver's intentions. "From a heating and cooling point of view, you might want your car to be darker or lighter depending on weather. On the interior, you can customise your dashboard for each person. If I'm an elderly person, I probably want a very large speedometer so I can see it; if I'm a race-car driver, maybe all I want is a tachometer."

The researchers looked at accidents involving nearly 4,000 children under age 16 between 2000 and 2003, and found child injury rates of about 1.7 percent in both cars and SUVs. The study examined only 1998 or newer cars and SUVs with second-generation air bags.

On average, the SUVs weighed 1,300 pounds more than the cars studied. The study found that the extra weight of SUVs enhanced safety, reducing the risk of injury by more than a third.

But that was offset by findings that SUVs were more than twice as likely as cars to roll over in crashes.

Children in rollovers were three times more likely to be seriously injured than those in non-rollover accidents, according to the study.