The Internet loves a scoop, and car lovers love to speculate on new models. That's the perfect environment in which to incubate Photoshop renderings of sports cars hinted at, but unconfirmed. The latest engagement of wishful thinking hit the Internet this past weekend. It's a take on a car BMW officials have yet to announce but which the German media has been predicting for several years: the return of the BMW M1, a two-seat sports car the Munich-based company built in the mid-1970s.

Ducati upped the ante, unleashing a bike with an 849cc engine that weighs no more than competitors in the 600cc range. In fact, the Superbike 848 weighs 44 pounds less than its 749cc predecessor. To shed pounds, Ducati uses vacural molding, a fabrication process that inhales molten alloy directly into die casts to create a seamless piece of aluminum. This eliminates the need to fasten multiple pieces with welds and bolts that weaken a structure and add weight.

Let's face it. It's hard to design a new exotic supercar. The most timeless shapes were spoken for years ago, and every exotic since then has been just a derivative mishmash of science fiction and aerodynamics optimization (especially the homemade ones). That's not to say a car like the Lamborghini Gallardo isn't good looking in its own way, or that the Aston Martin DB9 isn't a luscious piece of eye candy. It's just that those traditional parameters of automotive beauty—see any Ferrari built before 1972—no longer exist.

Could new federal fuel mileage regulations kill sports-car specialists like Porsche? Probably not, but those companies may have to pay heavy fines as the cost of doing business or radically change their US product mix. That's AutoWeek's interpretation of new rules proposed by the Department of Transportation's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Hanyoung Lee wants you to be seen. The South Korea-based product designer devised a prototypical warning device to prevent pedestrian strikes along roadway crosswalks. It's called the Virtual Wall, a visual barrier created from plasma laser beams.

Making Formula One racing "greener" may be as much a marketing decision as a policy of corporate responsibility. But according to F1 officials, there's another reason to do so. The series has been moving further out of sync with the technical direction of the passenger car industry, which increasingly has fuel economy on the brain. F1 was always intended to be a bellwether, not a rogue element. That's one reason why, beginning in 2009 Formula One racing will introduce a hybrid-drive system into the series. If you want a sneak preview of how a hybrid setup might work in a racing application, keep an eye on how well one oddly named race car performs in next month's 24 Hours of Nürburgring endurance challenge in Germany next month.

A Norwegian electric-vehicle manufacturer best known for a Y2K-era commuter-car venture with Ford is plotting a solo return to the states. Flush with cash from Silicon Valley angel investors RockPort Capital Partners and Kleiner Perkins, Caulfield and Byers, THiNK North America plans to start selling a version of its 95-percent-recyclable City car to US buyers starting in 2009. The company also plans to introduce the larger Ox (pictured) by 2010/2011.

A racing team led by 66-year-old Ed Shadle is gunning for the world land speed record of 763 miles per hour—their goal is to break the 800 mark. Shadle has spent a decade and $150,000 getting ready, and transforming an old jet into his potentially record-smashing ride, the North American Eagle. The car boasts 42,000 horsepower, and will supposedly do 0 to 800 in just 20 seconds. And it's entirely green, running on solar . . . no, just kidding.

The big news, though, is that Shadle is looking for drivers.

Transport a 2008 Toyota Camry back to the "Car of Tomorrow" exhibit at the 1964 World's Fair and they'd never buy the hype. "Seven airbags?" they'd say, "And no jet pack? Yeah, sure." Those were the days before Ralph Nader penned his auto-safety call to arms, "Unsafe at Any Speed," putting auto safety on regulators' and engineers' short lists for the next several decades. And it's far from over: A massive road-safety research initiative in Europe is aiming for a technological framework within which cars would be entirely smash-proof.