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.

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.

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.

In 2007, registrations of new hybrid vehicles jumped by 38 percent to 350,289 vehicles, according to a new report from R.L. Polk & Company. Gee, I wonder why? Maybe it's got something to do with rising prices at the pump, or climate change. Or maybe there's something bigger at play.

High drama in the electric car world: According to the New York Times, electric sports-car manufacturer Tesla is suing Henrik Fisker and Bernhard Koehler of Fisker Coachbuild, charging that Fisker “fraudulently” signed on to design Tesla’s “White Star” sedan, sabotaged the sedan project by doing substandard work, then stole confidential information and went on to build a competing car—the Fisker Karma.

Earlier this month, we told you about an alternative oil for 2-stroke engines made from beef tallow. As you may remember, 2-stroke engines are tiny and powerful, but inefficient and heavy polluters. For years, engineers have tried to combine the efficiency of a 4-stroke engine with the power of a 2-stroke, only to come up short because the technology was simply not yet advanced enough. A team of UK researchers have finally solved that puzzle with a prototype they call the 2/4SIGHT.

After spending $100,000 on a car, you don’t expect the lightweight carbon-fiber trim to turn yellow and peel in the sun. But that’s the downside for carbon fiber with clear-coat (instead of colored) paint, as GM found when testing materials for the 2004 Corvette Z06 Commemorative Edition. So the company redesigned the clear coat and the epoxy resin binding the carbon fibers in the roof and trim of the 2009 Corvette ZR1.

One of the technologies being touted as the next great thing for our cars is the hydrogen fuel cell. If you’ve heard anything about them, it’s that there are no harmful emissions, the only by-product is pure water, straight from your tailpipe. Of course, that’s only part of the story. While it is true that your exhaust will be clean, that’s only because hydrogen in a cell is not a source of energy the way gasoline naturally is—it’s a carrier, like a battery. The energy to be stored in the cell has to come from somewhere else. Right now, the sources are the same as they’ve always been, relying heavily on fossil fuels. The emissions are simply moved from your exhaust to a power plant.

But what if the hydrogen could be produced with alternative energy sources?

Later we’ll be posting a gallery of the most attractive, noteworthy, and technologically advanced cars from this year’s New York International Auto Show (watch our auto show coverage page here). But for now, I present you with the most unfortunate piece of automotive design on the showroom floor: The Toyota Yaris Club Five Axis Design.