Berlin— An expanded legal investigation of Porsche SE’s former top executives might delay or even jeopardize a planned full merger with Volkswagen AG, the sports car maker said.
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Washington — Federal safety regulators and Ford Motor Co. are still in talks over whether the automaker’s limited recall of 135,000 F-150s over air bag issues will satisfy the government’s concerns about safety.
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This is the car Eminem should have driven through Detroit during that incredible Super Bowl ad. The 2011 Chrysler 300 is stunning to look at and fun to drive. It has undergone more of a transformation than a redesign — like a butterfly emerging from its sheet-metal cocoon.
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Honda said it is recalling 97,201 2009-2010 Honda Fits due to a problem with the engine that could lead to engine damage or stalling.

Honda has identified a problem with the motion springs, a component in the engine’s valvetrain, which can bend or break over time. If this happens, you will hear an abnormal noise coming from the engine, which could eventually stall or become damaged.

Honda says no crashes or injures have occurred because of the defect. Starting in early March, Honda will begin notifying affected customers and will encourage them to bring their vehicles in for service.

If you believe your vehicle is affected, you can call Honda’s customer service department at 800-999-1009 (select option 4) or go to Honda’s customer recall website.
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It’s that time of year, friends. Winter! While we may harp about being sure your tires are in good shape and filled to their proper pressure, keeping your windshield wiper fluid topped off and maintaining a stash of water, snacks and emergency gear, there’s one thing we haven’t discussed with you: proper interior defrosting techniques. Yeah, the interior. Anyone can scrape the outside of the car.

If there’s one thing that makes me crazy it’s seeing a car going down the road with its windows fogged up on the inside. There’s nothing as simultaneously hazardous and fixable as fogged-up windows.

Before you pull out of your driveway—telling yourself that your foggy windows won’t get any worse—let me tell you how to fix it.

You should know the cause first, though. Interior windows become fogged due to humidity inside the car, which can come from having a lot of people in the car or being a heavy breather. This problem goes from bad to worse when temperatures dip and condensation starts to freeze on your windows.

Interestingly, the solution might seem counterintuitive. Just turn on your air conditioning. That’s right, just get that air conditioning going and the fog will clear. As usual, I urge you not to drive until your windows have cleared up. You don’t have to turn the air temperature to cold, by the way.

But wait, you don’t have air conditioning? We can work with this, but the results are not quite as quick or as comfortable. On warmer days, you can just roll your windows down; not to drive with your head out the window but to let some of the trapped humidity out of the car. In winter, though, you may need to just switch your climate control system to be sure it’s not recirculating air. That button labeled “REC” doesn’t stand for recreational air; it means recirculate. Your vehicle’s button may show a car with an oval arrow inside of it. Use this feature to recirculate your car’s air when you have nasty air outside that you don’t want in the car. Opt for fresh air coming in to keep your windows clear.

In high school, my friend Toby would pick me up in his VW Beetle. On winter days the defrost system was a complicated mechanism involving whomever was in the passenger seat, the little windows on the sides of the windshield and a cassette-tape case to scrape the frost of the windshield. (The mix tape case got a crack in it, so we switched to Def Leppard; structural integrity of the tape case was crucial.) Who needed a scraper? Not us! We were rebels!

OK, the last method is highly dubious and only moderately successful. If you have more tips or tricks that you use to defog the inside of your car, tell us in the comment section below.
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The Honda CR-V has been a mainstay on KickingTires’ monthly best-sellers’ list. With a roomy interior and a good-looking exterior, it’s easy to see why this midsize SUV is popular with consumers. We tested the five-seat CR-V in our Car Seat Check to see how it handles a variety of seats.

For the Car Seat Check, we use a Cosco rear-facing infant-safety seat, a Graco convertible child-safety seat and Graco high-back booster seat. The front seats are adjusted to a comfortable position for a 6-foot driver and a 5-foot-8 passenger. The child seats are installed in the second row and, if available, third row. The booster seat sits behind the driver’s seat, and the infant seat and convertible seats are installed behind the passenger seat.

Here’s how the 2011 CR-V scored in MotherProof.com’s Car Seat Check:

Latch system: The CR-V has five Latch anchors, with one set of anchors in each outboard seat and the final anchor positioned in the middle seating position. This setup provides parents with flexibility when installing car seats because they can use Latch anchors for a car seat in the middle seat position. However, parents should know that they shouldn’t double up on a Latch anchor and use it for more than one car seat. The CR-V’s anchors are easy to find, but the cushions around them are a little stiff. We had to push them around to get access to the anchors.

The CR-V has three tether anchors. The two outer tethers are two-thirds down the seatback, and the middle seat’s tether is in the cargo area’s ceiling.

Booster seat: The CR-V’s reclining seatback made it easy to install our high-back booster seat. The booster fit well, but the seat belt buckles are floppy, making it easy for the booster seat to slide over them. The outboard seats’ head restraints are fixed, but they weren’t in the way of our booster seat.

Convertible child-safety seat: The reclining seatback helped us out when installing the forward-facing convertible. By angling it back, we were able to get a good fit with this car seat. The rear-facing convertible fit easily into the CR-V’s backseat.

Rear-facing infant-safety seat: This car seat also fit well. There was plenty of legroom in the back row, so we didn’t have to move the front passenger seat forward to get this infant seat installed.

Do two car seats fit? Yes

Do three car seats fit? No
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The redesigned 2011 Dodge Journey wowed all the judges in Cars.com’s $29,000 SUV Shootout and earned second place. This midsize SUV comes with two or three rows of seats. Our test car had two rows and could seat five.

For the Car Seat Check, we use a Cosco rear-facing infant-safety seat, a Graco convertible child-safety seat and Graco high-back booster seat. The front seats are adjusted to a comfortable position for a 6-foot driver and a 5-foot-8 passenger. The child seats are installed in the second row and, if available, third row. The booster seat sits behind the driver’s seat, and the infant seat and convertible seats are installed behind the passenger seat.

Here’s how the 2011 Journey scored in MotherProof.com’s Car Seat Check:

Latch system: The Journey has five lower Latch anchors, allowing parents to install a car seat in all of the seating positions. However, parents shouldn’t double up on Latch anchors, using one anchor to install two car seats.

There are two sets of Latch anchors in the outboard seats and one anchor in the middle seat. Only the middle anchor is visible to the eye. While hidden from view, the other anchors are easy to use because there’s lots of clearance around them.

The Journey’s three tether anchors sit at the bottom of the second row’s seatbacks. They’re hidden from view by the cargo load floor.  To use them, we had to slide the second-row seats forward.

Booster seat: The fixed head restraint interfered with our high-back booster’s seatback. Usually we can compensate for this by reclining the seatback, but this didn’t help in the Journey because the head restraint is so large. The seat belt buckles are floppy, making it easy for booster seats to slide over them and difficult for kids to buckle up independently.

Convertible child-safety seat: The head restraint also got in the way of our forward-facing convertible’s seatback. We tried reclining the seatback, and this allowed us to get a much better fit with this car seat. The rear-facing convertible fit well in the second row.

Rear-facing infant-safety seat: The infant-safety seat also fit well in the Journey.

Do two car seats fit? Yes

Do three car seats fit? No
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Nissan’s minivan, the Quest, returns to the marketplace with a new look that sets it apart from its redesigned minivan competitors.

From the front, the 2011 Quest has a short nose that looks good on this family hauler. However, the Quest’s rear turned me off. My husband said it looked like a “brick on wheels” from the rear, and it pains me a little to admit that he’s right. Among the Quest’s competitors, the 2011 Toyota Sienna and 2011 Honda Odyssey both had significant redesigns and feature swoopy, sculpted looks, especially in the rear. They have a very “unminivan” look.

The Quest seems to embrace not only its minivan-ness but also its van roots. I couldn’t help but think my test car – a Quest SL, which starts at $34,350—looked like a Ford E-150 commercial van with rounded corners. To my eye, the clunky rear made the Quest look gigantic (no butt jokes, please). It seemed like the longest car that I’ve ever tried to park in my parking spot. Once I looked up the dimensions, I discovered that I’ve fit slightly longer minivans and SUVs in my city parking space. At 200.8 inches long, the Quest is 2 inches shorter than the 2011 Chrysler Town & Country and Odyssey. It’s only about a half-inch longer than the Sienna. The 2011 Quest is a few inches shorter than its 2009 predecessor.

Once I got in the Quest’s driver’s seat, I found a lot to like. The Quest’s V-6 engine has plenty of power to tackle highway on-ramps, and the continuously variable automatic transmission worked seamlessly with it. The Quest absorbed the bumps—some sizable—as I drove my family around Chicago’s streets and out to the suburbs on the highway, but the suspension didn’t seem too soft or feel floaty.

Forward and rear visibility in the Quest is fantastic. The Quest has huge windows on all sides and large side mirrors that are really tall. When I first saw the side mirrors, I thought they’d be at home on a tractor-trailer, but once I used them, I became a big fan of these tall mirrors. My test car also had optional sunroofs in both the first and second rows ($1,350), adding to the minivan’s open feeling.

One thing I’d like to see on the Quest is all-wheel drive. My parking space is in an alley that’s often icy in the winter. Every time I tried to pull into my parking spot, which requires a lot of maneuvering, the front-wheel-drive Quest got stuck on the ice. I was able to coax the Quest into my parking spot by putting it in a low gear. However, I couldn’t help but wish for all-wheel drive after doing this multiple times.

The Quest’s interior does a lot of things well. The dash is elegant yet simple, with a faux wood trim and easy-to-use center stack with a navigation system. The heated driver and front passenger seats were greatly appreciated during the subzero temps of my test drive, but I couldn’t help but wonder why this minivan didn’t have a heated steering wheel.

The Quest is filled with plenty of storage cubbies, including a drawer that sits at the base of the center console and easily holds several DVD cases. The second row also has a center console that’s deep enough to hold two sets of wireless headphones and whatever else your kids can pile in there.

The wireless headphones are part of an optional rear entertainment system that has an 11-inch screen that folds down from the ceiling. My husband and I have often joked that in our next car we want a Plexiglas divider that can be raised between us and the kids whenever they’re getting too loud. After using the Quest’s rear entertainment system, we now realize we don’t need a divider. We just need a rear entertainment system with wireless headphones. As we drove home from the suburbs with a movie playing for the kids, we couldn’t help but relish the silence coming from the second row.

My kids loved the rear entertainment system as well as the center console that sat between the captain’s chairs. My 4-year-old had no problem getting in and out of the Quest because of a low step that’s carved into the power-sliding door openings. Both of my boys loved the power-sliding doors, and I had plenty of help opening and closing them with the key fob or easy-to-reach buttons in the second row.

Legroom was OK in the second row, but we had the captain’s chairs, which can be moved forward and back, pushed all the way back. I’m not sure there’d be enough legroom for second-row occupants if you had to move the seats forward to create more legroom for the tight third row.

The third row folds flat easily and can be raised with the pull of a strap. Behind the third row is a covered well that’s big and could easily swallow a good chunk of a big grocery run.

For better or worse, the Quest stands out in the minivan crowd with its squared-off rear. If you like its looks, the Quest offers the seating and cargo flexibility that busy families need.
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I thought I had until middle school to start worrying about my kids and peer pressure. Hah, I was so naïve. My kids aren’t pressured about your typical big-time scary things, but they have noticed that their friends aren’t using booster seats anymore and want to know why they still have to use them.

This isn’t ’80s-era textbook peer pressure—“C’mon, if you ride in a booster you’re not cool!”—it’s just their friends announcing that they don’t ride in boosters anymore. It also could be that my kids have noticed that many of their friends aren’t in boosters, but either way I hear about it from my not-so-little ones. This usually translates to one of my kids saying, “If he/she doesn’t ride in a booster, I shouldn’t ride in a booster either!” These days, I hear this phrase during every trip we take in the car.

While it’s less of a problem for my son because he meets the height requirement of 4 feet 9 inches to ride without a booster seat, my daughter is still a way off from going boosterless. Learn more about booster seat basics here.

Lately, I’ve found that she doesn’t accept my usual reasons for using a booster seat. I can’t use the abstract argument of “It’s the safest way to be in the car” anymore. Nor does “because I said so” work very effectively.

I have only one surefire argument I can use. That is that in the state of Colorado, kids ages 8 and younger are required by law to use a child-safety seat. For bigger kids, this means boosters. So, I say, “Hey, if you guys aren’t in a booster I’ll go to jail.” That ends the debate. For now.

I know Chief Mom Kristin Varela has written about her daughters using boosters without issue, but my family doesn’t work the same way. Are your 7- and 8-year-olds in booster seats? Do you have to cajole them to use boosters? Tell us in the comment section below.
I’m never going to survive high school.
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Global Vehicles has dropped a lawsuit against Mahindra in federal court over delays getting its small diesel pickups certified for sale in the U.S.
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