The startling results come one year after GMAC Insurance first set out to gauge the knowledge of the American driving public, when licensed drivers were administered 20 questions found on a typical DMV written drivers test. The 2006 findings indicate drivers still do not have adequate knowledge of basic rules of the road, and they exhibit bad habits behind the wheel. For the second year in a row, Oregon drivers ranked highest on the test, with an average score of 91 percent (70 percent or higher is required to pass a standard drivers test), and Rhode Island ranked lowest, with an average score of 75 percent.

"The rules of the road should not be something you learn once when you are 16 years old," said Gary Kusumi, CEO and president, GMAC Insurance - Personal Lines. "We want to remind everyone that they need to work on their driving skills every day. If we're all diligent, we can avoid many accidents and stay safe."

In the year 2139 few vehicles are left on earth, one of them driven by Judge Dredd, a cartoon caracter from the 2000AD Comic. The only safe way to travel in that violent world is in armored taxis- built by Landrover.

So for the Hollywood movie "Judge Dredd", starring Sylvester Stallone, several 101's were equipped with a futuristic fiberglass body. Design work was done by Gordon Sked and David Woodhouse, the vehicles were built by Land Rover. After the movie was finished almost all vehicles were bought by Philipp Bashall and are for sale. The vehicles are not road legal as they are but can be easily made to. All the 101's mechanical parts are retained. This is a hot, noisy vehicle- but what a headturner!

The number 640 in the new moniker denotes the total hp rating of the tweaked V12 engine, up 60 hp from the outgoing Murci?lago coupe's V12 thanks to a bump in displacement from 6.2 liters to 6.5 liters. Lamborghini says the added power shaves 0.4 seconds from the zero-to-62 mph sprint, bringing it down to a scant 3.4 seconds.

A convertible version of the Murcielago, introduced last year, retains the 6.2-liter 580-hp V12. It has a removable fabric top: When it's installed, Lamborghini advises keeping the speed under 100 mph.

A more aggressive front bumper with reshaped air intakes and a large spoiler underneath distinguish the 2007 LP640 from previous Murci?lagos and make the bold design of the outgoing coupe even wilder. A redesigned rear diffuser encompasses twin exhaust pipes, and the taillights are now all red.

"The Quattroporte is a styling masterpiece ... the unpretentious Pininfarina shape will continue to turn heads when other sedans have become yesterday's styling fad. It is these concours-winning looks, underpinned by performance and fit and finish that are world-class, that make the Quattroporte Sport GT our favorite new sedan."

It's called pimpin' or donkin' and no, most of us didn't know what that meant either. But basically, it means restoring, specifically old American cars generally from around 1970. "This is a '69 Buick Electra. Just an old man kinda Grandpa car." Believe it or not, 20-year-old Ian Huber is just the 2nd owner of this car.

He got it from an older gentleman who lived in University Tower. And you can bet car-makers are scratching their heads trying to figure out how it could appeal to both of them. "One thing, they're fairly easy to work on. Modern cars, it's computerized. You've gotta have computers to work on the engines. It's a lot harder to do mechanical upgrades and just modify."

"I kind of wanted to bring it back and keep it around, I didn't want it to die out." 22-year-old Stephen Walker is in the process of donkin' a '83 Buick Regal. "New interior, re-paint a little, new rims, that's about it. Maybe a small-block chevy instead of the V6."

Don't forget the 8 batteries and the hydraulics. Steve Berg: "How much does all of this stuff cost?" Stephen Walker: "Around $4,000, because when you do this, the car has to be taken completely apart." Ian Huber: "I've done power door locks on it." Granted there have been a few changes since grandpa drove it, but the appeal crosses generations. For Huber, it's been a bonding experience with his dad who's in the restoration business.

A prototype of the five-seater model to be manufactured at the West Bengal plant is undergoing tests at a Tata facility in the western Indian city of Pune, Tata said.

He said the company aims to keep the car's price below 100,000 rupees ($2,200), making it the cheapest car on the Indian road. Currently, Maruti Udyog Ltd., in which Japan's Suzuki Motor Corp. holds a controlling stake, makes a compact hatchback that is India's cheapest car, selling for about 225,000 rupees ($5,000).

The Tata project is expected to create about 10,000 jobs at the plant and vendor chains.

Tata didn't say how many cars the proposed plant will produce each year. It also wasn't clear if the company planned to sell the car in overseas markets as well.

GM, the world's largest carmaker by volume, said on Wednesday it would axe one of three shifts at its Ellesmere Port plant, affecting about 900 jobs as it seeks to compensate for an expected decline in sales of its Astra compact model.

The move followed unsuccessful negotiations with labor representatives who wanted to share production cuts across other plants in Germany and Belgium that make the ageing Opel/Vauxhall Astra model.

"Our industry simply cannot afford to stop continually improving productivity in its Western European car plants," GM Europe President Carl-Peter Forster, who angered workers after flagging the job cuts last week, said.

The cuts, to take effect later in the summer, follow plans announced by Peugeot Citroen last month to close its central England plant, eliminating 2,300 jobs, and more than 5,000 job losses when British carmaker MG Rover collapsed last year.

With all the histrionics about rising gas prices coming out of Washington these days, SUVs must be an endangered species in our nation's capital, right? Well, not exactly. At Capitol Cadillac, just inside the Beltway, SUVs are flying off the lot. Last week, former White House chief of staff Andy Card dropped by to pick up a new SRX, Caddy's midsize SUV, says dealer Daniel Jobe. But Jobe's hottest seller, by far, is the newly redesigned chrome-encrusted Cadillac Escalade, an incredible hulk that gets 13mpg in the city. "My biggest problem is not gas prices," says Jobe, "it's getting enough of these trucks."

One in four new models today comes equipped with a gas-thirsty V-8 engine?which is unchanged from last summer, before gas prices spiked, according to new data from J.D. Power. And some of the best-selling rides on the road today are GM's trio of beefy new SUVs?the Chevy Tahoe, the GMC Yukon and that blingy 'Slade, which saw its sales surge 127 percent last month. Meanwhile, last year's "it" car, the hybrid, is becoming a harder sell. Sure, dealers are still selling out of the Prius, but sales of the Honda Accord hybrid plunged 69 percent last month and Ford had to resort to a zero percent financing deal to jump-start its Escape hybrid. For all their megawatt buzz, hybrids still account for just 1 percent of U.S. auto sales and are outsold by SUVs 23-1. "Not a lot of people are jumping up to pay $3,000 extra for a hybrid," says Memphis Toyota dealer Kent Ritchey. "For $3,000, you can buy a lot of gas."

The car, named "TeamGreen," is 3.1 metres (10 feet 2 inches) long and a mere 0.6 metres (2 feet) wide, weighing just 30 kilograms (four stone).

"It's a labour of love," said Green, a technician in the mechanical engineering department of Bath University, south-west England.

"I think the car is important because it is a reminder to us all that the way to achieve fuel-savings is to drive lighter cars -- it's the weight of this car that is the main reason for its fuel-efficiency," he said.

Green's car is powered by a single cylinder four-stroke engine with a capacity of just 35 cc.

It will be the only British entry in a global competition in France later this month to decide the world's most fuel-economic car.

Aspiring filmmakers who enter the "Define Lincoln Luxury" contest must create an original commercial articulating their own interpretation of Lincoln luxury. The commercial should be 30 to 60 seconds in length and must feature at least one shot of a Lincoln vehicle. Judging will be based on originality and creativity, appropriateness of commercial to theme and overall appeal. Official rules, entry forms, and submission guidelines are available on http://www.lincolnlounge.com, Lincoln's all-new urban lifestyle website.

A Grand Prize winner will be selected on July 5, 2006, by a panel of experts from the advertising and film communities. In addition to a two-year lease on the 2006 Lincoln Zephyr or $10,000 in cash, the Grand Prize winner also will receive a 5-day, 4-night trip for two to South Beach, Florida on July 20 - July 24, where the winning commercial will debut at the ABFF Filmmaker Award Brunch.

"The new data from the latest AutoVIBES study provides insight into consumers? future buying intentions," said Rick Wainschel, vice president of marketing research and brand communications for Kelley Blue Book. "Extreme shifts in segment consideration levels reveal just how profound the impact of recent increases in gas prices is on consumers and their vehicle purchase behaviors. This information will be an important bellwether of the long-term effect of this issue on new-vehicle shoppers."

These preliminary April 2006 AutoVIBES data also show an increase in awareness of alternative fuel vehicles. Sixty-six percent of consumers are aware of E85 (a mixture of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline), and 59 percent are aware of flex-fuel vehicles (those that can run on either regular gasoline or E85). The April awareness levels for both E85 and flex-fuel vehicles jumped a significant number of points over the previous month (E85 and flex-fuel awareness levels were at 60 percent and 55 percent in March 2006, respectively).

"With gas prices on the rise and continuing to climb, consumers are more aware of and interested in highly fuel-efficient cars now than they have been in the last 25 years," said Jack R. Nerad, executive editorial director and executive market analyst for Kelley Blue Book and kbb.com. "We expect to see increased consumer interest for some of the recently-introduced fuel-efficient sub-compact vehicles such as the Toyota Yaris, Nissan Versa and Honda Fit, in addition to hybrid, flex-fuel and compact models."

Consideration for compact sedans is at an all-time high at 19 percent, up four points from the previous month.

Hybrid vehicle consideration also reached an all-time high in April at 14 percent, which is more than double the percentage of consumers that were considering hybrids last month. (Six percent considered hybrids in March 2006).

In contrast, consideration for mid-size SUVs is at an all-time low at 19 percent, and full-size pickup consideration also is down considerably at 11 percent, a 5 point drop from the previous month.

The Associated Press has photographed Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert (R-IL) ditching his brightly colored hydrogen automobile in favor of a gas-guzzling black SUV after exiting a news conference and photo opportunity at a Washington, DC gas station.

After the conference, which addressed high gas prices, Hastert and other Congressmen had been carted away in fuel saving and alternatively powered automobiles. Just blocks away from the scene, Hastert was photographed ditching his in favor of his usual official car.

For security purposes, congressional leaders' official cars are required to be armored, limiting their choices in those respects mostly to vans or SUVs. Time magazine reported in December that House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has searched unsuccessfully for a suitably armored hybrid.

"There's so much that could go wrong right now," said Phil Flynn, an energy analyst at Alaron Trading in Chicago. "This is the scariest time we've seen in oil in a long period of time."

In addition to the looming showdown with Iran over its nuclear ambitions, terrorists have repeatedly threatened to attack oil infrastructure in Saudi Arabia; Nigerian rebels have disrupted exports by 25%; Iraq is pumping out 30% less crude than it did before the war; production in the Gulf of Mexico has yet to return to normal after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and Bolivian President Evo Morales yesterday seized control of the country's oil and gas fields and gave foreign companies 180 days to agree to new deals with the government.

"We're on a hair trigger," said John Kilduff, senior vice president of energy risk management at Fimat USA, a New York commodities trading firm.

"Unfortunately for consumers, we're on the brink of [$100 a barrel] as we speak," he said. "It's been a parade of horribles."