Taking a page from its SEMA playbook, Ford is rolling out a top-of-the-line, semi-blinged-out people hauler for 2011, the Flex Titanium.

It's dressed up for a night on the town, or a trip to soccer practice, and was devised by Ford product gurus who noticed most Flex customers tend to take high levels of content in their vehicles.

 

Electric vehicles aren't quite the new phenomenon many people think they are -- and we're not talking about GM's electric vehicle in the late 1980s. As anyone who lives in or near one those posh gated communities can probably tell you, tiny neighborhood electric, low-speed vehicles ferry people back and forth within said communities and around town. According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, the "back and forth within the community" isn't a problem, but "around town" certainly is. Allowing such vehicles access to the same roads as regular traffic, which dozens of states do, puts the drivers at high risk for grievous injury and death. 

Is this the next stroke of brilliance from Infiniti? We’ll have to wait until the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance event in August to find out.

As has been its custom the past couple of years, Nissan’s luxury-division carmaker has been revealing its wares at events surrounding the California concours. And today we’ve obtained teaser “brush strokes” of two cars to be shown there this summer.

 

I've read this several times and am still just completely dumbfounded.

According to Gizmag, a team of researchers composed of two groups -- one from the University of California San Diego, the other from the University of Washington -- took on the challenge of seeing if a vehicle's computer system could be remotely compromised by hackers. The answer, in a nutshell, is "and how."

According to the report:

"The team managed to bring a wide range of systems under external control, from the engine to brakes to locks to the instrument panel to (the first to fall) the radio and its display. The attackers posted messages, initiated annoying sounds and even left the driver powerless to control radio volume.

 

We drove the latest FedEx delivery truck and found the experience truly electrifying.

Yes, the Navistar-built, Modec-designed big honking van they let us pilot around a big parking lot south of the Los Angeles Sports Arena is powered by 80 kilowatt-hours of lithium-ion batteries spinning a 76-kilowatt (102-hp, 221 lb-ft) electric motor. With a range of 100 miles in city driving, an operator could complete a standard eight-hour day on a single charge.

 

When Tata first announced that Jaguar and Land Rover would be rolling out new hybrid models, we expected the luxury carmaker and purveyor of go-anywhere SUVs to simply plop an electric motor and some batteries into an existing model and call it a day. Land Rover, at least, looks to completely embarrass those expectations when the all-new LRX goes on sale next year. The vehicle is set to break ground for Land Rover, a brand that has been content to manufacture and sell luxury SUVs with big, thirsty engines for generations.  

And here it is, finally: a shot of the 2011 Jeep Grand Cherokee. And it's an action shot, no less.

The 2011 iteration of the Grand Cherokee is an important launch for Chrysler, a company that's been hamstrung by poor sales and an even worse reputation since being bailed out by the federal government and its subsequent takeover by Fiat and that company's CEO, Sergio Marchionne. Chrysler has a number of new models slated to hit dealer floors -- many of them based on Fiat underpinnings -- though most of them are still a ways away. The new Grand Cherokee is, without a doubt, an important litmus test as to the company's near future -- and perhaps beyond. Chrysler really needs to get this one right. 

When people talk about the rekindling of the muscle car wars, they usually discuss horsepower, handling, torque -- all those good things. But to my mind, there's another, less cut-and-dried way to measure who's currently reigning supreme: the car's place in pop culture.

I bring this up because it's being reported that the Ford Mustang will play a major role in the network remake of the island-cop drama "Hawaii Five-O," and it seems to me that the 'Stang has got to be the most ubiquitous of the big three muscles, right? I mean, the Chevy Camaro obviously scored a major pop-culture coup with its none-too-subtle tie-in to the "Transformers" franchise (a coup in terms of exposure, not the quality of the movies in question), but where else does it pop up in the film, television or music universe? Likewise the Dodge Challenger -- sure, a classic version was featured in the original "Gone in Sixty Seconds," and I'm pretty sure Vic Mackie drove a purple one in the latter seasons of FX's cop drama "The Shield" (or was that a Charger?).