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As the year of 1972 was drawing to a close, my father had finally saved up enough money to buy himself his first new car, and his heart was set on a Chevrolet Chevelle SS. And no wonder – the midsize Chevy Super Sport had earned a reputation for performance with rugged good looks to match. Its twin stripes and domed hood hid a 402-cubic-inch V8 engine (though Chevy still called it a 396, owing to that mill's muscle car heritage), and, though down on power from the horsepower heyday of 1970, it sent tons of American grunt to the rear wheels in the very best tire-melting fashion.

Then 1973 rolled around, and General Motors completely remade its midsize offerings, eschewing the chiseled good looks of past models for what many, including my father, thought was a bloated, squared-off design that didn't look very muscular. Good old Dad did the right thing – he bought a '73 Firebird, and thus became a Pontiac man for life. And that's how my family grew up with a long slew of Pontiac machinery that included a Grand Prix or three, several Trans Am models and a barn full of GTO convertibles in various states of repair and disrepair.

While the Pontiac nameplate has since ascended to the great automotive graveyard in the sky, there's a direct link between the old Chevelle of yesteryear through the last Pontiac GTO and its spiritual successor, the G8, and the brand-spankin'-new 2014 Chevy SS that is today's subject du jour. And, somewhat surprisingly, that link has long since left the United States, diverting its way through Australia instead. Allow us to explain.

If there were ever a reason for automakers like Audi and Volkswagen to get their "clean diesel" technology – or something even cleaner, i.e., zero-emission vehicles – on the road, this is it. Researchers at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands say up to six percent of lung-cancer deaths in the US and UK could be caused by diesel exhaust. The researchers published a study in the Environmental Health Perspectives that found that people with occupational exposure to extensive diesel exhaust accounted for 4.8 percent of US and UK lung-cancer deaths, while 1.3 percent of the deaths were of people who lived near highways.

The study involved testing UK and US truckers and miners who were exposed to emissions from diesel engines produced between the 1970s and 1990s. Researchers said it was "unclear" if the results are applicable to more modern diesel engines but added that the findings were consistent with earlier studies, since this isn't the first time there has been an official link between diesel exhaust and cancer. The new Utrecht study also said that lifetime exposure to diesel exhaust causes as many as 689 extra lung cancer deaths for every 10,000 workers exposed, an additional 6.9 percent risk. Federal workplace standards state that any scenario where the death-risk rises 0.1 percent is considered notable.

The good news is that the study (read a synopsis below) says the number of "uncontrolled" older diesel engines in the US, Europe and Japan has dropped "substantially" in recent years. The problem is that as some engines get cleaner, other problems arise. Independent researchers at TUeV Nord in Germany recently found the advanced gasoline engines can emit 10 times more particulates and harmful carcinogens than today's new diesel engines. The new GDI engines are even worse than earlier gas engines, spewing up to 1,000 times the harmful emissions because of the higher-pressure cylinders. Given the strict emissions regulations in Europe and around the world, we expect GDI engines will soon get the same kind of regulatory scrutiny that diesel mills have had up until now.

Any car with a six-figure price tag is bound to be pretty exclusive, especially one as exotic as the McLaren 12C. But even among its elite class of buyers, there will always be those who want to differentiate their supercar from others. And for that, there's McLaren Special Operations.

The customization department at McLaren offers an array of personalization options for the 12C, and every once in a while, it's prone to display some of those options on a uniquely outfitted supercar. And this is the latest.

Called the MSO 12C Concept Car, this unique MP4-12C packs a new hood, front wings, rear vents, airbrake spoiler and a roof-mounted air scoop, all crafted from carbon fiber. The long list of extras also includes wheel bolts and filler caps for oil and water ade of titanium, and an interior packed with even more carbon fiber trim. It looks pretty sweet in Storm Trooper white and black, and you can check it out, inside and out, in the image gallery above.

Raising taxes in any democratic country is tricky business, but there are certain groups on which it's easier to raise taxes than others. Smokers, for example, have a hard time making an argument against raising taxes on cigarettes. As far as the working class is concerned, raising taxes on the rich is a no-brainer. And in Germany, they may find it easiest to levy taxes against non-Germans.

The issue in question revolves around placing a toll on the Autobahn, but one that would only apply to foreign citizens driving in Germany. And make no mistake about it, there are a lot of them. Germany has 2,330 miles of border with nine different countries, the residents of which often use the Autobahn – one of the first and most extensive networks of highways in Europe – to get around.

Germany is subsequently left footing the bill for infrastructure used by foreign residents who don't pay the taxes to keep it up, which is why it's now working to implement a toll on the highways. The plan is part of a coalition agreement between Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative bloc and the Social Democrats with which she's working to form a government. While the exact logistics of its implementation still have to be worked out, the toll would apply to non-Germans while German citizens would be exempt.

The plan is drawing sharp criticism from within Germany and from without. The transport minister of neighboring Austria, an estimated 1.8 million of which use Germany's Autobahns regularly, is threatening to take Germany to the European Court of Justice over the matter. Meanwhile German auto club ADAC says the measure wouldn't even be enough to cover the cost of maintaining the infrastructure, raising questions as to its point.

You can't debate Audi's record in endurance racing. With 12 victories at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, it comes second only to Porsche in the history books of the famous endurance race – only in Audi's case, all of those victories have come in the last 14 years, losing only twice: once to its partner team Bentley in 2003 and once to rival Peugeot in 2009. It's won the FIA World Endurance Championship in both of the seasons it's run so far, and has won championships in the European and American Le Mans Series, too.

That's quite a record to defend, and defend it Audi will with an evolved LMP1 racer next year. Only a week after tying up its second consecutive world championship, the German outfit is already back at Sebring this weekend testing the successor to the all-conquering R18 e-tron Quattro. Unfortunately as the new United SportsCar Championship doesn't include LMP1s, the only chance we may have to see it competing here in the United States will be at the 6 Hours of the Circuit of the Americas in September.

Audi is keeping mum on the details for the time being, releasing only this one photo and promising to reveal further details before the end of the month, but we can already discern a more streamlined shape, revised aero and reprofiled headlamps among the changes from the outgoing R18. One way or another, with Toyota upping its game and Porsche returning to top-level competition next season, Audi may be in for its toughest challenge yet – but you can bet it won't take it lying down. Scope out the press release below and watch this space for more.

If you look at the stratospheric sticker prices on the latest generation of hypercars and wonder how an automaker could possibly justify it, bear in mind a few factoids. For one thing, even when the sticker prices start lower, they quickly balloon past the million-dollar mark. For another, automakers charge that much because they can, and don't seem to have much trouble selling them all.

Case in point: the new LaFerrari. While presenting the state-of-the-art supercar on CNBC, Ferrari North America CEO Marco Mattiacci revealed that all 499 examples that will be made of the hybrid hypercar – including those 120 earmarked for North America – have already been spoken for. This despite the $1.4 million asking price that makes it the most expensive Ferrari ever made.

Or the most expensive new Ferrari, we should say, because prices for the most collectable machines ever to roll out the gates at Maranello continue to rise. Figure you'll save a little and get LaFerrari's predecessor? Trading hands these days at prices approaching $2 million (around three times its original $660k MSRP), the Enzo is even more expensive. And that's just the scarlet tip of the iceberg.

A classic 250 LM recently sold at auction for $14 million, a 275 GTB/4 NART Spyder for $27.5 million and the most recent 250 GTO to have changed hands sold for a reputed $52 million. Heck, even a wrecked Dino 308 GT4 sold for a quarter million, which suddenly makes LaFerrari seem like a bargain. Shame they're all spoken for...

Volvo may be better known for turbo fives and inline fours, but in 2005 it launched the XC90 with a new eight-cylinder engine built for it by Yamaha. Fast forward to this past June when Volvo announced its intention to enter Australia's V8 Supercars series, where it would compete with the likes of Ford, Holden, Nissan and Mercedes-AMG. This is the engine with which it intends to do so.

Revealed this weekend at the Sydney 500, this competition-spec powerplant is based on the same B8444S that powered the XC90 and S80 (not to mention the Noble M600), but tuned for racing duty to be shoehorned into the new S60 touring car. The 60-degree aluminum block has been bored out from 4.4 liters to 5.0, its compression ratio boosted to 10:1, modified to run on E85 bio-ethanol and its redline increased to 7500 rpm. Volvo also promises a unique engine note from its new racers.

While Volvo and its racing partner Polestar haven't released official output numbers, regulations call for outputs between 620 and 650 horsepower – in any event, a whole lot more than the 311 hp it produces in stock form. (Noble managed to squeeze that much out of the same block, but that required twin turbochargers while this unit remains naturally aspirated.) Scope out the details in the press release below and the photos from the reveal in the gallery above.

Dodge is only building 500 examples of the black-and-blue Mopar '13 Dart, but the majority of them are now being recalled. Part of the Mopar upgrade included replacing the stock seat skins in the Dart with black and blue Katzkin leather, but the seat-mounted side airbags were reinstalled improperly during the upfitting process, which could affect the performance of the front seat side airbags.

According to the official National Highway Traffic Safety Administration bulletin, a total of 374 Mopar '13 cars are being recalled due to side airbags that might not deploy in a side-impact collision. There have been no reports of the airbags not going off, but Chrysler will still need to reinstall the bags to ensure proper deployment. The recall notice is posted below, which gives information for Mopar '13 owners to contact Chrysler and NHTSA.

Bringing two racing series together is good news for racing fans, whether it's the re-merger of the IndyCar and Champ Car series, the reconciliation between the FIA and the ACO to form the World Endurance Championship or the joining of forces between Grand-Am and the American Le Mans Series.

The upcoming season brings the latter two together into the newly-created United SportsCar Championship, and has left the organizers with the challenge – and us the benefit – of bringing two similar yet different pillars of American sportscar racing into one series. And now they've announced some of what we can expect.

For the first season, 28 entries are lined up for the GT Daytona class (where you can expect to see privateer entries from the likes of Dempsey Racing and Flying Lizard Motorsports) and another dozen in the GT Le Mans class (composed mostly of factory-backed teams from Aston Martin, Porsche and the new Corvette C7.R).

The twelve-car Prototype Challenge class is built exclusively around the Oreca FLM09, but the real action will be found in the top-tier Prototype class. That's where you can expect to find seventeen Daytona prototypes tangling with LMP2s and even the DeltaWing in what promises to be an automotive version of Mixed Martial Arts. Scope out the details in the pair of press releases below and start counting down the days until the season kicks off at Daytona in January.

Mercedes-Benz has a long and very storied racing history, dating back to the dawn of the automobile. Naturally, we take every opportunity available to explore that history, which is why this clip is so interesting.

It's from a video called "Magical Moments" that Mercedes puts out through its Classic store. From what we can tell, it recaps some events from its glory days and features quotes from some of the Silver Arrows' greatest drivers. The acting is, predictably, a bit wooden, but the cars are simply exquisite. With appearances from Jackie Stewart and all the classic Mercedes racers you can possibly imagine, any fan of vintage cars is going to get a kick out of this.

Scroll down for six-minutes of classic open-wheeled racers and endurance cars.

The Ford Mustang may not be the first vehicle that comes to mind when you think of environmentally-friendly forms of transportation. The arrival of the turbocharged four-cylinder engine in the new Mustang could do a lot to combat that perception, but the EcoBoost engine may just be the tip of the iceberg in that regard.

Speaking with Ford powertrain boss Bob Fascetti at the reveal of the new Mustang in Australia, GoAuto reports that the Blue Oval automaker is considering offering its latest pony car with a diesel, hybrid or even electric powertrain in the future.

"We're not looking at diesel at the moment, but given where we need to go with fuel consumption we are looking at all our options," said Fascetti. Other options could include a nine- or ten-speed automatic transmission to replace the current six-speed unit in order to help improve fuel economy and emissions for the Mustang, although figures for the current lineup have yet to be revealed.

When it announced official pricing and fuel economy data for the 2014 Civic , Honda conspicuously left out any mention of the Hybrid or Natural Gas models. On its retail site, Honda still lists the 2012 model year for the Natural Gas, so we reached out to the automaker for some clarification.

Due to remaining inventory of the 2012 Civic Natural Gas, the 2013 model year was mostly sold to corporate and government fleets, and the 2012 still has a $3,000 gas card incentive that was introduced in October 2012. The 2014 Civic Natural Gas will get all of the same updates as the rest of the 2014 Civic lineup, including tweaked interior and exterior styling and some fancy new tech, but it will continue to use the five-speed automatic transmission rather than switching over to a continuously variable transmission.

No word yet on pricing for the 2014 Civic Natural Gas, but it will likely continue to be the highest-priced model of the Civic lineup when it goes on sale in February. The 2014 Civic Hybrid goes on sale at the same time.

Another day, another lightweight, track-ready sports car manufacturer popping up and claiming to give us the world. Today, the companies in question are Palatov Motorsport and Sector 111, the latter of which is responsible for US-market BAC Monos. Their goal is to build an 1,800-pounds sports car that uses a 430-horsepower, emissions-compliant V8.

Based on the Palatov D2, a 1,600-pound car that looks like the love child of a Caterham, a KTM X-Bow and the Flip Car from Fast and Furious 6, Palatov and Sector 111 have dubbed the car Project Dragon. It will get a real name after it's all figured out. We don't have much to go on besides the stated goals and the modification of the Palatov D2, so we'll file this one right in the "vaporware" drawer until more information becomes available.

You can scroll down for the joint press release from both Palatov and Sector 111.

When we want to know how a car company is doing, one thing we typically look at is how many cars it's selling. That means Toyota is the largest, General Motors the second, followed by Volkswagen, then down the line. But there are other metrics by which to evaluate how an automaker is doing. That, in the case of publicly-traded companies like GM, is stock price. And the General seems to be doing pretty well.

Following the government bailout and the restructuring of one of America's largest corporations and employers, GM issued its Initial Public Offering in 2010 at $33 per share. Prices have meandered in the years since, but The Detroit News reports that GM's stock has now broken through the $40-per-share mark for the first time since hitting the market over three years ago. That's an all-time high for "New GM." Interestingly, some analysts, including Morgan Stanley, are predicting that the share price will continue to rise to $45 or even $47 per share.

The rise in price reportedly resulted principally from the US Treasury Department approaching complete divestment from the company, selling off the remainder of the 61 percent stake it acquired when it bailed GM out for nearly $50 billion.