Auto Shows

China's Beijing Auto will start selling its first model based on the old Saab 9-5 platform later this year. The company purchased the technology from the recently-bankrupt Swedish automaker in 2009.
The C70G midsize sedan, which made its debut at last month's Beijing auto show, is fitted with a 2.0-liter turbocharged gasoline engine. It is 4860 mm (191.33 inches) long, 1820 mm (71.65 inches) wide and 1641 mm (64.60 inches) tall, according to BAIC.
It is

The 2013 Viper, Chrysler Group's fastest-ever production vehicle at 206 mph, will arrive in dealerships late this year with a more powerful version of its former engine. Chrysler unveiled the high-performance two-seater last week at the New York auto show with a new brand badge -- SRT -- and a back-lit snake emblem above the rear license plate. The 2013 SRT Viper will have a more powerful version of Chrysler's biggest engine: a 640-hp, 8.4-liter V-10 that generates 600 pounds-feet of torque. The revised engine has 40 more hp than

The 2013 Hyundai Elantra GT unveiled at the Chicago Auto Show is a five-door hatchback that replaces the Elantra Touring wagon. The car is powered by a 1.8-liter, 148-hp four-cylinder engine and is available with a six-speed automatic transmission. Unlike the Elantra sedan, which is assembled in Alabama, the GT will be built in Korea. U.S. sales begin this summer.

TOYOTA CITY, Japan (Reuters) -- Toyota Motor Corp. unveiled a new framework for vehicle development aimed at making its cars more appealing, while cutting costs by at least 30 percent through the use of more shared parts.
Since taking the helm three years ago, CEO Akio Toyoda has sought to steer Toyota's focus back to making better products, blaming unchecked sales growth in the run-up to the financial crisis for its penchant for building popular but unexciting cars.

LOS ANGELES (Bloomberg) -- Toyota Motor Corp., the world's largest seller of hybrid vehicles, wants to be able to supply thousands of hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles annually in the next decade in anticipation of demand for petroleum-free autos.
The carmaker displayed its hydrogen-powered FCV-R concept car Tuesday at the Geneva motor show, reiterating its intention to sell vehicles based on the non-polluting sedan by 2015.
"We are preparing to be able to

LOS ANGELES -- Despite minimal sales, Nissan North America will continue selling its boxy, youth-oriented Cube crossover, the automaker's top U.S. sales executive says. Nissan sold just 198 Cubes in October. "It's a niche product that has found its place in the market," Brian Carolin, Nissan North America's senior vice president for sales and marketing, said in its defense at the Los Angeles Auto Show. "It benefited particularly when gas prices were spiking earlier this year, and we were struggling to get a supply of it. We had

BERLIN – Earlier this month, Volkswagen threw a party in New York's Museum of Modern Art to mark a breakthrough year in the U.S. and the highest annual sales in the country since 2002.
The celebration proved to be premature. Two days later at the Detroit auto show, Hyundai beat VW's Passat with its Elantra sedan to win the North American Car of the Year award, underlining the company's status as a major competitor to Volkswagen.
The automaker and its

FRANKFURT -- Audi has begun production of the Q3 compact SUV at sister brand Seat's Martorell plant in Spain.
Audi expects to produce 100,000 units of the Q3 a year in the plant, in which Audi and Seat have invested a total of 330 million euros in infrastructure and production lines, Audi said on Tuesday.
The Q3 compact SUV will compete with the BMW X1 as the two luxury-car makers compete to tap the growing demand for smaller SUVs aimed at urban buyers.

Geneva's auto show is the place for supercar brands, design houses and even mainstream automakers to step out a bit, showing their most stylish stuff. That was certainly the case during this year's press days, with the stands holding everything from a bristling new Ferrari to an origami Toyota hybrid.

DETROIT -- General Motors will launch a small Chevrolet crossover late this year in more than 140 global markets, but not in the United States.
GM said today that it will unveil the Chevrolet Trax in September at the Paris auto show.
The crossover will be built on the Gamma platform that underpins the Chevrolet Sonic subcompact. GM plans to launch two other small crossovers built on the same platform: the Opel Mokka, which should hit showrooms by year end,