We obsessively cover the auto industry…

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.

When Kia introduced the updated 2014 Sportage back in September, one of the biggest things that stood out to us was that the base model was dropped. Not only did this mean the Sportage would no longer be offered with a manual gearbox, but we also expected a price increase to follow. We were right.

The entry-level trim for the 2014 Sportage is now the LX, which starts at $21,600 (not including $850 for destination). This is only a $400 increase over the 2013 Sportage LX, but it represents a $2,600 jump (13.6 percent) in the Sportage's starting price point. At this new price, the Sportage is now priced higher than the Mazda CX-5, Hyundai Tucson and Mitsubishi Outlander Sport and lower than many other compact crossovers like the Ford Escape, Chevy Equinox, Nissan Rogue, Jeep Cherokee and Toyota RAV4. Pricing for the 2014 Sportage EX has increased by $800, starting at $25,000, while the sportier, turbocharged Sportage SX holds steady at $26,900.

In addition to other minor changes like slightly refreshed exterior styling, a sportier suspension setup for the LX trim level and more available cabin tech, the other key update made to the 2014 Sportage is the addition of direct injection to the base 2.4-liter four-cylinder engine. This brings a slight bump in power output (from 176 horsepower and 168 pound-feet of torque in 2013 to 182 hp and 178 lb-ft for 2014), but, for some reason unknown to us, it dings fuel economy. With ratings of 21 miles per gallon in the city and 28 mpg on the highway, the front-wheel-drive Sportage loses 2 mpg for the highway rating compared to 2013, while the all-wheel-drive model's 19 mpg city and 26 mpg highway is a drop of 1 mpg for both figures.

When the FIA revealed the final calendar for the 2014 Formula One World Championship, it was lacking in one specific area: namely, the proposed Grand Prix of America that was set to take place in New Jersey just across the river from Manhattan did not make the cut. But the organizers behind the race insist that it has not been canceled – merely postponed.

In a statement released hot on the heels of the FIA's decision, GP America chairman Leo Hindery, Jr., noted that the setbacks were primarily financial. The endeavor is being undertaken entirely with private funding and no government assistance, and with another year to work it out, the promoters hope to get the race back on the calendar for 2015.

"There is great demand for a race in New Jersey," added F1 boss Bernie Ecclestone, "and I have no doubt we'll be racing at Port Imperial in 2015." The race is earmarked to take place on a temporary street circuit running 3.2 miles along the Hudson River between the New Jersey towns of Weehawken and West New York.

Generally speaking, the Mercedes-Benz E63 AMG S Wagon is no slouch. It's considerably more sporting than some full-blown sports cars, all while being able to haul the kids to soccer practice or make a quick trip to the grocery store. What if you want more, though? Well, if the E63's 577 horsepower and 590 pound-feet of torque aren't enough to sate your appetite for power, the team from Brabus is just a phone call away, and now the German tuning house has turned its hand to the E63 Wagon.

This might be the only 838-horsepower, 848-pound-foot car to be disappointing, although that's merely because its sedan counterpart comes to market with 850 horsepower and 1,069 lb-ft of torque. Despite these lower power figures, though, Brabus is claiming that the 850 6.0 Wagon is actually faster to 62 than the Sedan - 3.1 seconds in the long-roof and 3.5 in the four-door. Top speed is limited to 186 miles per hour.

All the extra fury is thanks to a bored-out version of the E63's 5.5-liter, biturbocharged V8. Now displacing 5.9 liters, it's been fitted with heavily revised internals and sports (naturally) larger turbochargers. Brabus tells Evo that the lower power output of the Wagon is all in the name of engine life, but if it's really faster to 60, we can't imagine owners will be all that bothered. We've got a fairly hefty gallery of images of this long-roof rocket up top, so scroll up and let us know what you think.

A charity drive from Singapore to Malaysia went quite awry when a convoy of Lamborghinis smashed into each other on one of the city-state's highways, with one of the cars catching fire. And while it's easy to assume that the supercars were at fault, initial reports contradict that assumption.

It turns out the crash was a chain reaction set off by a local driver swerving toward two Gallardos and an Aventador, sending the latter into the guardrail and causing it to go up in flames. According to the report on CarBuzz, there were no injuries in the incident, although the circumstances - supercars burning in the midst of a charity event - draws some parallels to the tragic accident involving Paul Walker and Roger Rodas.

There's a short video taken after the wreck that can be viewed below. CarBuzz also has a few different images of the accident, aside from the screencap shown above.

A new Canadian kit car manufacturer, Dubuc Super Light Cars (SLC), has unveiled the Tomahawk, a lightweight, mid-engine kit car that's promised to weigh under 2,000 pounds. The Tomahawk will debut at the Montreal International Auto Show in January.

Dubuc SLC says the car will feature a 300-pound aluminum monocoque that's bonded and bolted together and a lightweight polymer body. The kit will be manufactured in Quebec City. A C4-generation Chevrolet Corvette will provide the suspension components and the company says that almost any type of powerplant can be bolted amidships, including an electric motor or an internal combustion engine.

The body and frame kit is priced at 19,995 Canadian dollars ($18,755), and a C4 Corvette will add a bit more to the build. Dubuc SLC says that a "skilled individual" should be able to build a Tomahawk in around 250 hours, but we're thinking it'll take most amateur mechanics a bit more time than that. All in, a complete Tomahawk should require "a total budget of [30,000 Canadian dollars] ($28,140) and more," the company says. That raises an important question: How much more?

Feel free to check out the video and peruse the press release below for more details.