nissan

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's a Nissan? Though limited to terrestrial travel, the concept Land Glider automobile from Nissan banks like an airplane, tilting into corners, giving drivers the sensation of flying. But, the likenesses to aviation don't end there. The two-seater orients driver and passenger in tandem -- one in front and one in back -- and rather than a steering wheel, the Land Glider has airplane-style, computer-guided yoke controls.

It's not all about singing robots in Tokyo this year. The annual CEATEC tech expo is loaded with the makings of your gadget-geek future.

It is estimated that about 100,000 crashes a year are caused by sleepyhead drivers. Now, scientists are combating driver fatigue by developing systems that monitor your level of alertness -- and Nissan is hoping to wake you up with a blast of smell.

Nissan has made another stride toward that strange but often-promised future: cars that drive themselves. A new system set for release in Japan links information from a car's real-time GPS navigation with existing radar-guided safety tech to help drivers make smooth turns on curvy roads. The Navigation-Cooperative Intelligent Pedal uses GPS mapping data to detect an oncoming bend, then strategically decelerates or applies the brakes. Here's how it works: When the nav system indicates a curve is looming, the accelerator pedal physically moves upward. Then the system activates the brakes.

This year’s New York International Auto Show was quiet, a confab for a shrinking industry. Sales have been tanking steadily for nearly every manufacturer. The corners of the showroom floor occupied by potentially doomed brands, like Hummer, felt a little like mausoleums. Still, plenty of automakers fought through the pain and unveiled interesting cars, which you can check out here.

Your car is going to drive you to work someday. Until then, car makers are experimenting with ideas that take control away from you in subtle, helpful ways – mostly to help increase fuel efficiency.

It's not quite a flying car, but after landing, you can tow the Icon A5 home and park it in a garage. It’s one of the first civilian flyers to feature automated folding wings, which slim down the mini seaplane so it can fit on a custom trailer. (An amphibious version offsets the extra weight of landing gear by trading the motorized wings for a manually folding set.)

Back in 1946, Mechanix Illustrated writer "Uncle" Tom McCahill began measuring cars' performance by how quickly he could launch them from a standing start to 60 miles per hour. That measure, evocative in its simplicity, quickly became the standard for judging a passenger car's performance, and a perfect proxy for advertisers to capture the excitement of driving in a single phrase. Zero to 60 in a scorching 5.5 seconds!