With the idea of making teen's better drivers, Toyota offers its Driving Expectations program. Toyota is using the program to better educate teen drivers and hopes to cut the high number of teens killed in auto crashes. You wouldn't know it but auto crashes are the number one killer of teens in the United States.

The idea behind the Driving Expectations program is to place teen drivers in real-world situations, with instruction coming from driving courses and classroom sessions. Real-world distractions have proven to be the most dangerous to teen drivers. This free program is geared to help teen's identify and react to dangerous driving situations.

Teen drivers and their parents are taught to better understand the relationship between distractions and reaction time. To help make it clear, teen drivers and their parents navigate a driving course while drinking water, listening to loud music and talking on a cell phone. In addition, under the watchful eye of professional drivers, they take part in hard braking maneuvers on wet and dry pavement and negotiate multiple slalom driving courses.

According to Toyota, their program is endorsed by the National Safety Council and the Federal Highway Administration, and to date, more than 5,500 teens and their parents across the country have participated.

Upcoming events for 2007 are at Phoenix International Raceway in Avondale, Arizona on the weekends of October 5-7 and 12-14, with an additional event in Arcadia, California October 19-21. The first 2008 event will be held in spring of next year.

An article in Business Week talks bout how Saturn's new BMW-like ads fell flat with buyers, causing GM to retool the Saturn campaign to stress the basics.

Someone interested in buying a Saturn is intrigued with their hasssle-free buying experience and friendly service. With that in mind, Saturn's new ad agency decided stressing the basics was the best approach and launched Saturns's "Rethink American" campaign.

The keystone to Saturn's success still lies with their network of dealers but decided to mimic the successes of other retailers.

For example, not unlike Toyota and their Scion brand, Saturn staffed chat rooms with experts to answer questions from potential buyers. They also convinced dealers to allow showroom visitors to test drive a Toyota Camry or Honda Accord along side the new Aura. In addition, just as Apple has used Genius Bar's in their brick and mortar stores, Saturn has also installed birch-wood bars in showrooms where those interested in Saturn's model line up can ask and get questions answered.

With the new "Rethink" campaign and comparison test drives, Saturn's web traffic is up 50%, to about 1.5 million visitors a month. Saturn expects to sell 260,000 cars this year, up a little from last year.

Zipcar founder Robin Chase has launched a new, socially conscious idea in carpooling. Using the inner workings of Facebook, she's introduced GoLoco.org, with the hope of it becoming the new way to get to work or school.

GoLoco hopes to take advantage of Facebook's huge social network and leverage that to link environmentally conscience commuters.

The idea is to connect like-minded commuters to share the ride, thus taking some of the 98 million cars off the road. Financial and ride-share agreements are made online with the hope of making the process as easy as possible.

This is definitely an idea worth considering. If you can't set up a car pool with coworkers, the next best thing is to use something your familiar with, thus the link to Facebook. People may feel more comfortable using a tool they are familiar with and establishing a car pool with those they interact with on a regular basis in an online community. Obviously, being safe should be your number one priority. Do all you can to check out people you are considering setting up a carpool with and consider meeting with them beforehand in a public place.

Business Week has more in an article they published earlier this month.

Nissan dealers in Japan have begun taking orders for the new GT-R and will continue to do so until October 24th when the car is unveiled at the Tokyo Motor Show.

Deliveries will begin in Japan in December with the GT-R appearing in United States showrooms in the spring of 2008.

In more GT-R news, apparently the new Nissan is having no problem matching or exceeding the Porsche 911 Turbo's lap time at the Nürburgring.

According to Autoblog, a few reporters were on hand recently when the GT-R lapped the infamous course, doing so two seconds quicker than Porsche's Turbo. Now, how accurate can a few reporters be with stop watches? We're not sure but it's fun to speculate about a car that will certainly have some outstanding performance numbers. We can't wait for Tokyo!

Even though they have to wait until January, 300 Honda Civic enthusiasts laid claim to all available limited edition Mugen RR's, all in about 10 minutes!

The Mugen gets a performance bump over the Type R. With an additional 15 horsepower, the Mugen has 240 bhp at 8000 rpm and 160 lb-ft at 7,000 rpm.

All 300 cars will come in the same Milan Red color with a new body kit, upgraded brakes, new suspension, new wheels and recaro seats.

In U.S. dollars, the Mugen will set the future owners back about $38,750.

The new BMW 1 Series, set to debut early next year, is surely doing one thing with long-time BMW fans. And that's taking them back to the sixties, reminding them of the affordable yet sporty 2002. BMW can only hope that the new 1 Series will become just as popular.

The 1 Series will come in two forms, the 128i and 135i. BMW will slot the car directly between the Mini Cooper and 3 Series.

Called the entry level model, the 128i will get the 328i's 3.0-liter, 230 horsepower inline six. Up a tick in refinement, the 135i uses the 335i's 3.0-liter 300 horsepower twin-turbocharged inline six. We have to stop here for a moment. As performance car enthusiasts, we'll try to keep our excitement on the down-low. How great is it that the smaller, lighter 1 Series gets to take advantage of the 3 Series outstanding powerplants?

The 135i will benefit from some M-like features. The upgrades include an aero kit, sport-tuned suspension and 18-inch rims. On the inside, the M-like niceties continue with sport bucket seats and pedals. Other standard and optional features include HD and satellite radio, an iPod jack and iDrive. The latter being an option with the navigation system.

Pricing is expected to start around $26,000 for the 128i, with the 135i comanding $5,000 more.