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The man responsible for creating the sleek 2010 Nissan Ellure Concept you see above is now the design director for Infiniti. Alfonso Albaisa (shown at right) has been a member of the Nissan design team for 25 years, but was recently promoted to executive design director for the Infiniti brand.

His past roles at Nissan have included design director for Nissan from 2004 to 2007, vice president of Nissan Design Europe from 2007 to 2011, vice president of Nissan Design America in 2011 and, most recently, he held the title of Nissan's global design director. Aside from Ellure, Albaisa was also responsible for designing the 2012 Nissan Xtrem Concept, "key strategic production vehicles soon to be launched" and he's even contributed to a handful of Infiniti designs.

Scroll down for the official press release.

Five months ago, former General Motors engineer Shanshan Du and her husband, Yu Qin were convicted of stealing hybrid technology trade secrets, in attempts to sell the information to Chinese competitors.

US District Judge Marianne Battani sentenced Du to serve one year and one day in prison, a relatively lightweight sentence compared with the minimum six and a half years called for by Federal guidelines. (The minimum sentence is not mandatory, in this instance.) Qin meanwhile, who was convicted of fraud and obstruction of justice, in addition to the conspiracy and possessing trade secrets convictions he shared with his wife, was sentenced to three years in prison. Both will remain free until late this summer.

The Associated Press and ABC News report that Judge Battani took Du's health problems, as well as threat to the public, into account with the sentencing. Said Battani, "I don't think the public needs to be protected from you, but it needs to be protected from others like you," according to the AP story.

Du and Qin both admitted to being guilty of and remorseful for their crimes, claiming they made "wrong decisions."

Click through to watch a video on Canadian espionage.

BAIC has officially pulled the covers off of its new Senova D Series sedan for China. The four-door is based on the old Saab 9-5 and boasts a turbocharged 2.0-litre four-cylinder engine. Local buyers can get their hands on the machine for around US$22,745 at current conversion rates. Other engine options include a turbocharged 1.8-litre comes standard on every trim except the very base model. Those goodies include a tire pressure monitoring system, active head restraints, blind spot detection, driver fatigue detection and parking sensors.

The Senova nameplate serves every model based on former Saab architectures, including the Epsilon, GM2900 and GM2400 platforms as well as engine and transmission tech. In order to promote its new products, BAIC has hired Hollywood staple Nicolas Cage to serve as the company's brand ambassador. Cage stars in the Senova-heavy Town of Car Legends action-packed video short (directed by Olivier Megaton of Transporter 3 and Taken 2 fame) which you can watch by scrolling below.

Daimler and Aston Martin have been "in discussions" over various matters going back at least five years, when an engine-supply deal from the Germans to the Brits turned into rumours of Daimler looking to buy a piece of Aston Martin. Neither the engines nor the company stake ever changed hands, but three years later they were talking about trying a relationship again, this time in the large luxury sedan segment - Daimler would get help with Maybach, Aston Martin would get help with the Lagonda revival. That also came to nothing.

Late last year, when Investment Dar offloaded a share of its stake in Aston Martin to Anglo-Italian equity house Investindustrial, part of the allure was that Investindustrial said it would work to unite Aston Martin with technology and components from AMG. So the talks have begun again.

Although nothing's come of it yet, Bloomberg reports that the English and the Germans have opened dialogue "on supply and technical-cooperation agreements." In November 2012, Investindustrial mentioned getting engines, gearboxes and other technology from AMG - a brand it got to know when it owned Ducati. A tie-up would also help indie player Aston Martin rein in development costs. Daimler is said to be Investindustrial's preferred partner, but the latest chapter has only just begun. We're sure they hope it won't take another five years to get something closed with someone.

Click through to watch our video short cuts of the Rapide.

Honda has confirmed that the forthcoming Acura NSX hybrid supercar will be built at a brand-new facility in Ohio, USA. This will be the company's third plant in Ohio, and will come as the result of a US$70 million investment. Honda first hinted that NSX production would be coming to Ohio when the original concept car was revealed at the 2012 Detroit Auto Show.

Honda's new facility, called the Performance Manufacturing Center, will encompass a 17,094 square metre (184,000-square foot) space inside of the automaker's former North American Logistics building and will employ 100 associates. As you might expect, the Performance Manufacturing Center is located just a few kilometres from Honda's American-based R&D facility, as well as the Marysville auto plant, where production of the 2014 Accord Hybrid will kick off this fall.

"The location of this facility is in the midst of one of the greatest collections of engineering and production talent in the world. So it makes sense that we will renew the dream and build this high-tech, supercar in Marysville, Ohio," said Hidenobu Iwata, president and CEO of Honda of America, in a press release.

Production of the Acura NSX will begin sometime in 2015. We have already seen the hybrid hero several times in conceptual form, with the latest reveal at this year's Detroit Auto Show giving us a glimpse at the car's interior.

Scroll down for the full details in Honda's press release as well as a video showing the NSX.

In terms of exterior appearance, not much has changed from the last time we spotted the next-generation Mazda3 out testing. Oh, sure – we can see plenty of details that clearly show the new Kodo design influence (that front end reminds us a whole lot of the sleek new Mazda6), but these latest round of spy shots don't really show us anything we haven't seen before. Oh, wait, yes they do – the interior!

Feast your eyes on the 2015 Mazda3's insides, showing a vastly reworked interior that also takes cues from the automaker's most recently refreshed products. We can see that there's a simple, clean center stack with a slim row of heating and cooling functions, and up top there's a large, presumably touchscreen display, with redundant controls found just aft of the shifter.


We expect that the 2015 Mazda3 will debut at the Frankfurt Motor Show this September, packing both petrol and diesel engines. A sedan variant is also in the works, and should debut shortly after the hatchback. Click here for a closer look at our latest spy shot images and then watch a video on Mazda's Kodo design, below.

Tesla's value on the stock market far exceeds the number of vehicles it contributes to the automotive market. According to a report from Automotive News, Tesla is currently valued at US$8.8 billion. Almost unbelievably, though we've never claimed to have a firm grasp on the inner workings of the stock market, that's a full billion dollars more valuable than Fiat and three times more valuable than PSA Peugeot Citroën, says the report.

How unfathomable is that statistic? Consider the fact that Tesla, a ten-year-old company, just managed to turn its very first profit last quarter and has produced fewer than 10,000 vehicles in its lifetime. How does that compare to an automotive giant like Fiat? Well... it doesn't – The brand sold well over 50,000 cars in North America alone in 2012, and it owns or controls the Chrysler portfolio of brands along with Ferrari and Maserati... not to mention the hundreds of thousands of cars Fiat Group sells yearly in the rest of the world.

Granted, the number of vehicles sold by a brand is just a small portion of its value, but you may still wonder, why is such a seemingly small player in the global automotive marketplace such a big deal on Wall Street? According to AN, it has a lot to do with its controversial and headline-grabbing CEO, Elon Musk, and the way he disseminates company information to his investors. How so? We suggest you take a good look at the article here for the whole story.

Click through to get Musk's advice on starting a new business in the following video clip.

Strategic Vision has released its annual Total Quality awards, and some of the winners may come as a surprise. To quote Alexander Edwards, President of Strategic Vision, "For the first time in over a decade our comprehensive and complete study of Quality resulted in more domestic winners than imports."

That's not to say import brands performed poorly. Volkswagen was voted the best overall corporation in Total Quality for the eighth-straight year, and Audi tied with Lexus for the best individual brand. Breaking things down on a model-by-model basis, here are some notable victories:

• Dodge Dart, Best Small Car
• Ford Fusion / Chevrolet Volt, Best Midsize Car
• Volkswagen CC, Best Large Car
• Hyundai Genesis / Audi A4, Best Near-Luxury Car
• Lexus LS, Best Luxury Car
• Chevrolet Corvette, Best Premium Coupe
• Chrysler Town & Country, Best Minivan
• Volkswagen Tiguan / Toyota FJ Cruiser, Best Entry Utility
• Chevrolet Traverse, Best Midsize Crossover Utility
• Dodge Durango, Best Midsize Traditional Utility
• Chevrolet Avalanche, Best Full-size Pickup
• Ford F-250 / F-350, Best Heavy Duty Pickup

Scroll down below for the full list of winners, both import and domestic, in each and every category.

The Bowler EXR S is a purpose-built SUV based on Land Rover bones with a 550-horsepower supercharged V8 designed to tackle off-road rallying events like the Paris-Dakar. The Caterham Seven Supersport is a feather-light track day weapon, purposely created to out-hustle just about anything on a winding race circuit. If asked to pick one of them as the fastest around a handling circuit in the UK, the smart money is clearly on the racing Caterham. Right?

Maybe, maybe not, as it turns out.

In what can only be the product of some right-place, right-time car loans, British publication Autocar has put together a wild on-track comparison between the Seven and the EXR S, with a pretty interesting outcome. We won't spoil it for you – go ahead and click it on below to watch the head-to-head for yourself.

Those that hanker for the days when automobiles were generally simple machines – responsive only to the will of their human masters – probably don't work in R&D at Visteon. The Michigan-based automotive supplier, with a track record in climate control and electronics manufacture, has released some new information about a new system it is calling Human Bayesian Intelligence Technology or HABIT.

The goal of HABIT, in a nutshell, is to learn and predict what in-car setting a driver would like, in advance of him even having to ask for them. Using data about radio, climate control and driving behavior, HABIT stores and analyses (some might say "learns") about a driver's preferences, and then cues them up for the driver at the right time of day, or in the right situation.

If all of that sounds a little George Orwell's "Big Brother" to you, well, just wait until you have a look at the demo video Visteon has put together. We'd certainly like to get a closer look at the HABIT system when it's ready for prime time (or even in advance of that), but we're not entirely sold on the sort of creepy, blonde robot guide that we see here. Scroll down to see and watch what we mean.

One driver in Portland, Oregon, USA should make a hefty donation to his or her local wildlife conservation group after a family of ducks got the person out of a speeding ticket. A Portland police officer clocked a car going 83 km/h (52 mph) in a 56 km/h (35-mph) zone, but when the officer went to pursue the speeder, a mother duck and her two ducklings ran some unintended interference.

Rather than just going around the ducks, the officer blocks the street to usher the waterfowl from the road. While the speeder got away, it's nice to see some compassion from the authorities. Besides, the gesture might've saved more than just the ducks from an unfortunate accident on the rain-slicked road. Scroll down to watch the video taken from the patrol car's dash cam.

A few weeks ago, we bid a fond happy 40th anniversary to the automotive dark ages of 1973-84 that have come to be known as "The Malaise Era" – the performance ice-age when 160 horsepower was a lot and a 0-60 mph (0-96 km/h) time of under 10 seconds was remarkable. Like music in the 1980s, everything in automobiledom didn't suck, however. There were a few bright spots. Here are five of our favourites:

1976-79 Porsche 930, aka 911 Turbo Carrera (above)
Photo Credit: Dorotheum

Porsche didn't get the Malaise memo either, and while Chevrolet beat them by a decade with the turbocharged Corvair Corsa, the Germans more fully developed turbocharging through racing where General Motors couldn't. Early 930s (known technically as 911 Turbo Carreras) were a bit crude, with turbo lag that could be measured with an egg timer. They lacked an intercooler as well as brakes that were up to the task, but performance was sensational, with the buff books reporting 0-60 mph (96 km/h) times of anywhere from 4.9 to 5.8 seconds and quarter-mile times of under 14 seconds. This was '60s muscle car performance at the height of the Malaise Era. Sadly, the 930 cost about six times as much as your average muscle car did.

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What do you do if you have enough money to buy a Lexus LFA but can't get the car safely to your house? Get local government involved, of course. Rune Berge Vik, of Stavanger, Norway, did just that after he bought a Lexus LFA (the only LFA in the Nordic region according to tv2.no) last year only to find out that it could not clear a speed bump in his neighborhood.

To remedy the situation, Vik got in touch with his city, which had the speed bump removed. Talk about your tax dollars hard at work. On the other hand, it's commendable that the man actually uses his supercar as a daily driver, and besides, doesn't a street-legal car have the right to access said public streets?

Click through to watch an LFA attack the racetrack.

I was more than a year removed from my last experience with the Mustang GT and its delicious 5.0 V8 when this new 2014 example rolled up to my driveway recently. Good weather and a planned road trip meant that I would get plenty of seat time in this conservatively specified example, too. In total, I logged about 643 kilometres (400 miles) in a week of driving – not a lot for some of you super commuters out there, but quite a lot for this work-from-home journalist.

The basic formula of the 5.0 has stayed the same for 2014. The 2013 model year saw a number of updates to keep the Mustang fresh until it's replaced with an all-new generation for 2015. So, for its bon voyage tour, the fifth-generation Pony Car has seen only a few modifications: a couple of new paint colours (Oxford White and Ruby Read Metallic), trim and wheel revisions and, sadly, the deletion of the Boss 302 from the Ford lineup. However, while the limited-edition Boss is likely to reappear sometime after the gen-six Mustang makes its debut in 2015, the GT Track Package cars like the one I tested provide at least a partial solution for those looking for hot laps.

Scroll down to read our driving notes...