1st Gear: Mazda stops building RX-8s, whither the rotary?
Mazda has stopped production of the RX-8 sports car, citing falling sales worldwide, and now the company that built its image around the rotary engine has no vehicles driven by it. Mazda has said it was only "pausing" production of rotary engines while it…

1st Gear: This Is The Most Expensive Car Ever
As we reported Saturday evening, a 1957 Ferrari Testa Rossa prototype sold for $14.9 million at the Gooding auction in Pebble Beach, Calif., tonight. Adding in the buyers' premium, the final price is $16.39 million, setting a record for the most expensive car ever sold…

1st Gear: While I'm unveiling the official "Jalopnik Staff Cruiser" tonight ahead of tomorrow's Woodward Dream Cruise, our own Justin Hyde is out at Pebble Beach chronicling the latest and greatest in pretentious luxury offerings (like the just-revealed Cadillac Ciel concept). All weekend, while I'm cruising down…

1st Gear: Come To Jalopnik's Woodward Dream Cruise Meetup Tomorrow!
The Woodward Dream Cruise is Saturday, and as we've done at Jalopnik in years past, we'll have an official "Jalopnik Staff Car" to cruise down Metro Detroit's M-1. In year's past we've had a "Bumblebee" Camaro and the GT500KR from the…

1st Gear: Ford F-150 EcoBoost Pickups Make Their Own Movement
Ford's created a new Fiesta Movement-like challenge for the F-150 EcoBoost-powered pickup truck, kicking it off today on Facebook. Drivers in eight cities will put EcoBoost-equipped Ford F-150s in fuel efficiency challenge tests and community projects. So…

1st Gear: Are Buyers Losing Interest In Chevy Volt?
USA Today's Chris Woodyard reports this morning that interest in buying the $39,995 Chevy Volt plug-in car is starting to taper off, not only among "early adopters" but among other buyers, as well, reports CNW Marketing Research. Considering that the Volt has some of…

1st Gear: Will Power's Double-Barreled Bird Flip
IndyCar Series driver Will Power was just a wee bit ticked off Sunday when race officials restarted late in the New Hampshire Motor Speedway race — with the track still wet. The result? A spin by Danica Patrick that took out several other drivers, including Power.…

1st Gear: This Is The Tuatara-ra-ra-ra-ra
Shelby SuperCars publicly dropped the cloth on the unfortunately-named SSC Tuatara for the press for the first time yesterday in Shanghai. In attendance was Jason Castriota, the designer behind not only this new SSC, but also the Stile Bertone Mantide, the P4/5 Pininfarina,…

1st Gear: New BMWs Only Cost One Buck More Than Used
Record-high prices for used luxury automobiles are driving more buyers to new-car lots, according to Bloomberg this morning. BMW's 2011 3-Series compacts and M3 sedans now cost $34 more a month than one-year-old used models. General Motors Co.'s Chevrolet Corvette…

1st Gear: Ward's Auto reports that after 44 years, the future of the rotary engine at Mazda, the last mass-market auto maker to produce the piston-less mill, is now in doubt. The engine has been offered on the Mazda RX-8 since its introduction for the '04 model year. But the sports car is being discontinued following…

1st Gear: On a day when stocks on Wall Street plunged with their sixth-largest one-day point drop, the auto industry wasn't spared and, in some cases, fared worse than market indexes. Investors shed auto stocks as Standard & Poor's decision on Friday to downgrade the long-term U.S. credit rating, compounded with…

1st Gear: Automotive News reports this morning on the state of Ferrari's model lineup, saying they plan to replace two of its five core models, the 430 Spider and the 599 GTB Fiorano, in the next two years, while adding a sportier variant to its best-selling model, the 458 Italia. Along with that sportier variant,…

1st Gear: General Motors has reclaimed the title of the world's largest automaker, based on production through the first half of 2011. Thanks to claiming the top sales spot in North America, China and South America, GM built 4.54 million vehicles through June. That compares with 4.13 million cars and trucks at…

1st Gear: General Motors said today it earned $2.5 billion in the second quarter, an 89% increase over its results in the same period a year ago. The nation's largest automaker reported that revenue for the period increased 19% to $39.4 billion. The results were driven by strong sales in G.M.'s core North American…

1st Gear: Bloomberg's reporting this morning how Audi plans to introduce its top-of-the line sports cars in the U.S. to enhance the brand's image and charge higher prices as it bids to narrow the gap with luxury-car leader BMW. Audi's 340-horsepower TT RS will go on sale in the U.S. next month, while the 78,000-euro…

1st Gear: Toyota reported a quarterly operating loss today due to Japan's biggest earthquake on record hammering production and the yen's rise hit profits on exports. The automaker made an operating loss of 108 billion yen ($1.4 billion) in the April-June quarter, compared with a 211.7 billion yen profit a year…

1st Gear: Toyota and Nissan, Japan's two biggest automakers, led a 27.6% drop in domestic vehicle sales, the 11th straight monthly decline, after the nation's March 11 earthquake disrupted production. Sales of cars, trucks and buses, excluding minicars, fell to 241,472 vehicles in July, the Japan Automobile Dealers…

1st Gear: Most of the world's largest automakers will join President Barack Obama at a ceremony this morning to endorse new U.S. fuel economy standards that will set an eventual average of 54.5 mpg by 2025. Execs from Detroit's Big Three, Toyota, Honda, Nissan and Hyundai, along with UAW President Bob King and…