It may come as a surprise to some, but women and men value similar features when selecting a new car. The top features sought by both sexes are exterior styling and overall value. This is a according to TrueCar.com, an auto buying site that regularly surveys buyers. Past experience with the brand and driving performance are next on the list.

But while men usually give an edge to styling and driving performance, women tend to rank safety and fuel economy more highly than men do, TrueCar says.

Those small differences are important as women become a larger force in the marketplace. Forty per cent of new vehicle registrants were female in the first four months of this year, up from 37 per cent in 2009, according to Edmunds.com. And that’s only expected to grow. Among younger buyers, women are already outpacing men.

“Women represent the biggest marketing opportunity in the world,” says Chantel Lenard, Ford’s U.S. marketing director.

Even when preferences converge, it may be for different reasons. For example, “reliability” is important to women because they don’t want to get stranded on the road, Lenard says. Men want reliable cars because they don’t want to spend a lot of time in the shop, she says.

Horsepower is important to men, which helps explain why Lamborghini has the highest proportion of male buyers of any brand, at nearly 95 per cent, according to the car shopping site Edmunds.com. But it’s also important to women, who want to know that they can accelerate quickly away from a problem, Lenard says.

Debbie Parsons sprang for one high-tech luxury — remote start — on her 2014 Chevrolet Spark after spending a frigid winter watching her neighbors use it to heat their cars. But mostly, she bought the subcompact for its cute styling and lemon-yellow paint.

“I’m sure they target women with these cars,” said Parsons, 58, a retired state employee who now does maintenance at an apartment complex in Charleston, West Virginia.

Parsons was also drawn to the car’s value — starting price $12,170 — and fuel economy. With safety in mind, she paid extra for OnStar, which gives her hands-free calling and quick access to emergency services.

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Apparently someone thought the price tag of 40 million dollars seemed about right.  A red 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO Berlinetta, which was once involved in a fatal accident, has set the world record for a car sold at auction, going for $38.1 million at a sale in California, auction house Bonhams said.

The price offered on Thursday by a bidder whose identity was not disclosed surpassed the $30 million (all figures U.S.) paid last year for a 1954 Mercedes Benz W196 race car, also sold by Bonhams, the auctioneers said in a press release.

“We’ve always maintained that we would exceed the current world record and that the car would bring between $30-$40-million and today the GTO did just that,” Robert Brooks, chairman of Bonhams, said in a statement.

Some reports prior to the auction had said the car might fetch as much as $70 million, but a Bonhams spokeswoman said these were based purely on speculation.

The Ferrari was the jewel in the crown for Bonhams’ annual Quail Lodge event on the Monterey Peninsula in California.

The auction house said that it was the world’s longest single-ownership for a Ferrari 250 GTO Berlinetta, effectively held by one family for 49 years from 1965 to 2014.

The car sold from the Maranello Rosso Collection and stamped with chassis number ‘3851 GT’ was the 19th 250 GTO Berlinetta made by Ferrari and completed on Sept. 11, 1962, Bonhams said.

It was delivered to the leading French racing driver Jo Schlesser, to be co-driven by himself and French ski Champion Henri Oreiller in the 1962 Tour de France Automobile.

Oreiller later crashed the car during a race at Montlhery Autodrome, south of Paris, and died of his injuries in hospital. A newspaper report at the time said the Ferrari careered off the track and flipped twice after a tyre burst.

The car was repaired by Ferrari in Italy and was sold to Italian gentleman driver Paolo Colombo in time for the start of the 1963 competition season.

In 1965 young Fabrizio Violati, the scion of a wealthy Italian family, bought the car. “I saved the car from scrap and hid it from my parents. I only drove it at night so nobody would see me”, Bonhams quoted him as saying.  This car is a collectors item but it will be hard to feel it for any more than what this man purchased it for.

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Nissan has announced that the Cube is no longer going to be sold in the North America market.  Another class cut-up has graduated from our motor pool. The Nissan Cube’s indefatigable weirdness was likely both its chief selling point and its Achilles Heel, but Autoblog sources say that after a six-year run in the US, the niche player has been scrubbed from the Japanese automaker’s lineup.

The move is hardly unexpected – there was confirmation from Nissan Canada that it was pulling the plug on the asymmetric little front-driver in its market back in May, and sales have not exactly been sparkling here in the States, either. In June, Nissan shifted just 336 Cubes, down 23.8 per cent year over year. So far this year, Nissan has sold 2,294 units, a sales pace off 30.9 per cent versus 2013. At its peak in 2010, the Cube remained firmly a niche vehicle, selling 22,968 units.

Nissan North America’s Dan Passe, senior manager of product communications, maintains that “We are continuing to sell the 2014 Cube and we haven’t made an announcement about future model plans,” but Autoblog sources indicate that an official announcement will be coming in the next couple of months, and the Cube has been conspicuously left off of an exhaustive 2015 lineup “Charting the Changes” announcement released on Tuesday.

For now, it’s unclear whether the third-generation Cube will continue to be sold beyond North America, or whether a fourth-generation is in the cards, but we wouldn’t bet on the Brave Little Toaster making a return appearance. Either way, Nissan has a pretty full small-car stable, what with its Versa Sedan, Versa Note, Sentra, Juke and Leaf EV – not to mention the Micra being available in the Great White North.  This announcement comes as no surprise to anyone who has been falling the unique Cube since its launch back in 2008.  The Cube will go down as one of the unique trial and error vehicles that simply did not work out.

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A lighter Ford Fusion, like any lighter car, is something enthusiasts have been championing for years, and now it is becoming a reality. Ford, with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Vehicle Technologies Program, has built six Lightweight Concepts.

The Ford Lightweight Concept is built on a 2013 Fusion, a car whose curb weight starts at 3,431 pounds and goes progressively to 3,913 pounds for the Energi.

This Fusion lost about 800 pounds from stock. It now weighs in at around 2,600 pounds—as light as the Ford Fiesta of which it shares its lightweight, 1.0-liter, 3-cylinder EcoBoost engine. 30% of the weight savings came from the suspension alone, while 35% came from the interior and the glass.

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The dangers of texting while driving are broadcast almost daily.  Authorities cited distracted driving as the cause of more than 3,300 deaths nationwide in 2012, the latest year available, and thousands more injuries.

Surveys show that drivers recognize the danger of distracted driving, and 43 states and the District of Columbia forbid texting while driving, yet large percentages of drivers — including roughly three-quarters of teens and other young drivers — continue to do it anyway. We have not managed to put down our devices long enough to get from point A to point B, even under threat of death or injury.

For all of us who know better, but can’t seem to police ourselves nor our driving-age children, a market has emerged for apps and other aids that limit distracted-driving for us.

Cellcontrol, of Baton Rouge, La., is one of a growing number of third-party suppliers of systems that let an administrator, likely a parent, to limit their child’s phone use while the car is in motion. Cellcontrol charges $119 to $129 for its device, which either plugs into the car’s diagnostic computer or adheres to the windshield in the form of a small black transponder.

The device determines when the vehicle is in motion and disables phone functions to the administrator’s preset customized levels, such as enabling only calls to emergency numbers or preventing texting. Hopefully this technology can help save drivers from themselves.

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The third generation of Honda’s subcompact, the Fit lives up to it’s name on tight streets and in places where precision matters.  Despite all the love for the first two iterations of the Fit, Honda saw room for improvement with the 2015 Honda Fit. The subcompact segment has evolved over the past few years, with newer competitors offering better fuel efficiency, more technology, and higher levels of refinement than the outgoing Honda Fit. To get back to the top of the class, the redesigned Fit must zero in on these areas without straying from Honda’s proven small-car formula.

Standard on the Fit EX and up is a new HondaLink touchscreen infotainment system. In recent years, we’ve criticized Honda and Acura interiors for their confusing array of buttons, but the new system swings to the other extreme with a nearly button-free interface that gives the dashboard a sleek, modern look. Still, we’ve frequently gone on record expressing our support of traditional buttons and knobs, and the Honda system’s finicky volume slider and lack of haptic feedback convince us that there is a happy medium between the two approaches.

Although the Honda Fit’s party piece has always been its interior packaging, the new Fit adds a bit more style to the equation. To accentuate the fresh exterior styling, the Fit will be available in eight colors, including several vibrant options. Reliable, economical, inexpensive, and cleverly designed, the Fit hits the mark in many ways.

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Great feel good story about two special young children! He suffers from a rare genetic and incurable disease called Glycogen Storage Disease Type 1B. Up until the 80s, most kids with his condition didn’t survive past the age of two.

But his best buddy, Dylan Siegel, wanted his friend to get better, so he wrote a book hoping to raise one million dollars to find a cure.
It took him an hour to write and illustrate the pages of “Chocolate Bar,” an expression the boys use to describe something great, fantastic, or awesome.

Read the full story here.

There are only about 100 people in the U.S. like 7-year-old Jonah Pournazarian.

He suffers from a rare genetic and incurable disease called Glycogen Storage Disease Type 1B. Up until the 80s, most kids with his condition didn’t survive past the age of two.

But his best buddy, Dylan Siegel, wanted his friend to get better, so he wrote a book hoping to raise one million dollars to find a cure.

It took him an hour to write and illustrate the pages of “Chocolate Bar,” an expression the boys use to describe something great, fantastic, or awesome.

 Read the full article here.

Nearly a week after the Boston bombings, crowd-funding websites that raise money for medical tragedies from car crashes to cancer say they’ve received more than 23,000 pledges promising more than $2 million for the victims and families of the marathon attack.

That includes nearly $500,000 for Celeste and Sydney Corcoran of Lowell, Mass., a mother-daughter duo who were both severely injured as they stood at the finish line. And it includes more than $560,000 directed to Boston newlyweds Jessica Kensky Downes and Patrick Downes, who each lost a leg in the blasts.

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Justin may be struggling in the wake of his split with Selena Gomez, but he wants to devote his time to helping others in order to get through the pain. HollywoodLife.com has all of the EXCLUSIVE details about the superstar’s new devotion to good deeds!

Get ready to Believe in the Bieb again! A source tells HollywoodLife.com EXCLUSIVELY that Justin Bieber is planning to donate more time to charity in an effort to improve his public image!

Read the full story here.