Do you want to save on your car insurance? Then you should move to Maine or Vermont, according to a recent survey by Insure.com. Those states have the lowest average car-insurance rates in the nation -- $902.85 and $968.58, respectively. Low commuter miles and uncrowded highways were credited with keeping the rates low.

 

Those who live in Louisiana ($2,510.87) and Michigan ($2,098.29) pay the most for insurance.

In the survey, average rates were calculated for more than 2,400 vehicles in 2010. Rates were based on a 40-year-old male driver who commutes 12 miles to work, has a $500 deductible on collision and comprehensive coverage and carries limits of 100/300/50, meaning a $100,000 maximum injury liability for one person, $300,000 for all injuries and $50,000 property damage per collision.

 

Click through to see what the average driver pays in your state for car insurance.

 

BMW took the time to blow its own horn by announcing that the company has produced more than 1 million 1-Series models. Believe it or not, buyers around the globe have found reason enough to snap the car up over healthy competition from other manufacturers. It’s kind of hard to believe BMW has had that much success with the 1-Series, given the model’s less-than-stellar sales here in the United States.

 

U.S. consumers can have their tiny BMW in either coupe or convertible, with a choice of two powerful engines -- which all sounds good until you start eyeing the price tag. Start choosing your options and before long, you can easily justify the jump to the much larger and more costly 3-Series.

 

 

When it rains it pours. But the folks in the Toyota camp have to be saying to themselves: When will it stop? For the first time in nearly a decade, Consumer Reports, a widely respected authority on automotive quality and reliability, is urging its readers not to buy an automobile: the Lexus GX 460. Why has the magazine slapped a “Don’t Buy: Safety Risk” label on the 7-passenger SUV? It could potentially roll over in real-world driving situations, such as when a driver enters a highway exit ramp or powers through a sweeping turn and encounters an obstacle or finds he has entered the turn with too much speed for the vehicle to stay firmly on the asphalt.

 

 

The 2011 Chevrolet Volt continues to rack up test miles as it streaks toward launching in the United States late this year.

 

Engineers said they have put 250,000 miles collectively on test Volts since November, and have flogged the extended range electric vehicle in extreme cold weather conditions. Some individual test cars have more than 20,000 miles on the clock. The Volt, the most anticipated General Motors vehicle in years, remains on track for its rollout in some parts of the nation, officials said.

 

 

The Dodge Viper is being placed in mothballs -- for now anyway -- as the 50 "Final Edition" Viper SRT-10 coupes, convertibles and race-ready ACRs get ready to roll off their Motown assembly line this summer.

 

All will feature a slick graphite-and-black color scheme, and be stuffed with a 600-horsepower 8.4-liter version of the 10-cylinder engine that’s been one of the Viper’s high-decibel calling cards since it first blew away crowds as a concept car at the 1989 Auto Show in Detroit. However, we can't pronounce the legendary nameplate dead yet; there are rumors a new Viper will hit the streets in 2013 that will have just as sharp fangs but be a bit more domesticated than current models.

 

The Web is lit up today with stories of an upcoming Saab 9-2 because Spyker CEO and Saab owner Victor Muller evidently has sketched what he sees as a new small Saab.

It could be a pipe dream, but Muller insists the Swedish automaker really wants it to happen.

Muller has been quoted as calling it "a small car, a quirky car, a Saab in the truest sense of the word."

 

"Don't take your eyes off the road" seems like a pretty intuitive piece of driving safety advice, and yet it's the conclusion reached by an entire Virginia Tech Transportation Institute study.

Of course, that's an oversimplification of the conclusions drawn by an in-depth study on the use of hands-free tech devices in vehicles. Yesterday, we reported that Transportation Secretary Roy LaHood advocated complete abstinence from using mobile communications technology while behind the wheel, which seems a bit far-fetched at this point, considering the cat is already out of the bag. However, good news from the VTTI study: Voice-activated in-car tech keeps drivers' eyes on the road for more of the ride, which in turn leads to fewer accidents.