This week's edition of the Lighter Car News looks at lightened bank accounts, particularly those of Tesla and Aston Martin. Even cash-rich Volkswagen is holding back, at least when it comes to features we can't yet order in the U.S. Let's have a look.

Tesla raises Model S price by $2,500

After Tesla said it would raise the base price on its new Model S sedan, we were picturing a big jump -- a "Matrix"-style leap from skyscraper to skyscraper. That kind of a jump. But no. The electric wonder car with the best performance and range in the industry now starts at $59,900 instead of $57,400.

Tesla is still unprofitable, with a cash flow that always seems to be in flux. Company accountants don't seem to know how much to charge, even four years after Tesla introduced the $109,000 Roadster. That Roadster, if anyone remembers, used to cost $92,000 in 2008 and then jumped overnight by $17,000 -- including for customers who were waiting on their deliveries. Tesla admitted to screwing up its cost estimates, and now, it's great to know they screwed up a whole lot less.

Current Model S customers with reservations -- those who have paid $5,000 deposits -- will not see the price increase. Only new customers who order a car on Jan. 1, 2013, or later will have to pay the higher price. While Tesla says the Model S carried "the same price set over three and a half years ago," the car hasn't even been in production for an entire year, nor are there many cars; fewer than 10,000 have been made. Year-over-year price increases are common for new and refreshed models -- this year alone, the industry average was about 2 percent -- but for Tesla, the increase lets it keep the lights on.

Aston Martin owners selling majority shares, for real this time


I'm not sure how "people familiar with the situation" can leak pending financial transactions without having their fingers chopped off, especially when they're talking about a Kuwaiti investment firm. Investment Dar owns the majority stake in Aston Martin, but recent reports have indicated it wants to sell the British automaker -- which was once owned by Ford -- to offset the billions in loans it now has to pay after defaulting over an Islamic bond in 2009.

The latest insider blabbering from Bloomberg suggests that Mahindra, an Indian car company that tried and failed to enter the U.S. market last year, offered Investment Dar more than $400 million for its 40 percent stake. Another bidder, a London-based investment group called Investindustrial, went slightly lower.

At this point, it seems a sale is inevitable. If Mahindra wins, it will be the second Indian automaker to own a storied British luxury automaker since Tata Motors purchased Jaguar and Land Rover in 2008. Come to think of it, what British automaker is actually owned by the British?

No matter what happens, Aston Martin is intent on competing in "all of the major sports car racing series" in the U.S. The photo above is its new Vantage GTE, one of 10 cars headed to California-based racing team The Racers Group.

All the great things we can't get on the new Golf


The latest, seventh-generation Volkswagen Golf is now on sale in Europe with a host of innovative safety features we won't be able to buy when it goes on sale in the U.S. late next year.

Of them is the new standard Multicollision Brake, which automatically brakes the Golf after a collision to prevent it from crashing again into another car or obstacle. VW points out that secondary collisions are especially dangerous since a vehicle's airbags and seatbelt pre-tensioners go off only once and can't protect occupants from multiple impacts. No other automaker has offered such a feature, especially not on a car as affordable as the Golf.

Other optional features include lane-departure warning and assist, full auto-braking, adaptive cruise control and fatigue detection. Ford already offers all of these features on the European-spec Focus, but again, don't expect too many of them, if any, to come here. VW has already told us such features aren't likely to make it on U.S. Golf models because Americans don't like to spend as much on small cars as Europeans do. Importing expensive safety features that could reduce the already slim profit margins on a Golf, even if it's worthy technology, isn't something VW wants to risk.