WASHINGTON -- The insurance industry named dozens of new cars and trucks, led by Ford Motor Co. and its Volvo subsidiary, to its annual list of the safest vehicles Tuesday, helped by the increased use of anti-rollover technology.

Ford and Volvo had 16 vehicles in the 2009 model year on the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety's list of the safest new cars, followed by Honda Motor Co. with 13 vehicles.

Seventy-two cars, trucks and SUVs received the top safety pick designation for 2009, more than double the number of vehicles in the 2008 model year and three times the number in 2007.

"The sheer number of this year's winners indicates that automakers have made huge strides to improve crash protection," said Institute president Adrian Lund.  read more »

Saturn has gone and made its Vue Hybrid even more hybrid-tastic. Now equipped with GM's advanced two-mode hybrid technology, the new 2009 Saturn Vue Green Line 2 Mode Hybrid promises a fifty percent increase in fuel mileage over the standard V6 model. All of that efficiency comes from a 3.6L V6 equipped with VVT and direct injection and not one, but two 55 kW electric motors integrated into the transmission. Those motors provide assist at different vehicle speeds in order to minimize fuel consumption. Pretty clever, eh?  read more »

These are the first true pictures of the 2010 Saab 9-4X crossover vehicle, just captured by our spy photographers undergoing track testing. We first saw this body style at the Detroit Auto Show , being touted at as the 9-4X BioPower Concept, but Saab is obviously serious about bringing this to the marketplace in a timely fashion.  read more »

If youre into the spy shot scene you may have noticed some earlier pictures of this car scattered on the web, but our European photographers have just gotten up close and were able to verify 100% the true identity of this masked prototype. We first saw this bodystyle at the Detroit Auto Show , being touted at as the 9-4X BioPower Concept, but Saab is obviously serious about bringing this to the marketplace in a timely fashion. Codenamed GMT168, the Saab 9-4X will arrive in time for the 2010 model year. Sharing the platform with the upcoming Cadillac BRX, the Theta-Epsilon based Saab will be built in at the Ramos Arizpe plant in Mexico. Unlike the U.S. based 9-7X, this will be sold globally. Styling as you can easily see will be very close to that of the concept, and powerplants will include a range of gasoline, as well as a new 250-horsepower diesel. The 9-4X will also offer Saabs XWD all-wheel-drive system.  read more »

An enterprising spy shooter at Car und Driver named Siler -- who we're assured has no relation to the bad guy from Heroes -- has captured on film what appears to be two camo-covered 2010 Cadillac CTS Coupes. It's the first known on-road spotting of the new deuce-door CTSexiness, and it appears to -- umm -- look a lot like the concept car that "blew" our minds last month at the Detroit Auto Show. These shots seem to indicate much of what we'd seen in Detroit would make it's way into a production version.  read more »

A mere two weeks after the General revealed the 2009 Cadillac CTS-V at the Detroit Auto Show, it's now been spotted for the first time in the wild at a CTS owners meet-up. Talk about drumming up some enthusiast support grass-roots style, right?  read more »