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I just shot a show with three leading environmentalists in California, all with the idea of getting into their heads and figuring out where the next round of CO2 regulations is headed. After all, as goes California, so goes the nation-and ultimately the world.

What the California environmental lobby wants are . . .

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A few blogs back I wrote about how Chrysler is going to combine its three brands and start eliminating overlapping models. The idea is to have Dodge concentrate on trucks and work-utilities, with Chrysler exclusively selling cars, and Jeep offering only SUV-based Jeeps.

It’s a bold plan, but a risky one. And while I see. . .

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I’ll bet most Autoblog readers take pretty good care of their cars. And like me, I’ll bet most of you change your oil about every 3,000 miles or so.

But recently I got to wondering . . .

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Some years back I got to meet Giorgietto Giugiaro, the ultra-famous Italian car designer. “Gosh,” I gushed, “you certainly are a visionary. Twenty years ago you said that the one-box design would become the dominant body style in the future. And you were right.”

“No, you’re wrong,” he corrected me matter of factly . . .

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When I was a kid, I couldn’t wait for the auto show. It was one of the most exciting things we did every year. Dazzling displays, shiny new models, and the hubbub of thousands of show-goers created an electricity in the air.

Today, as a member of the media . . .

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Chrysler is embarking on a bold and ambitious plan to dramatically reduce the number of dealers it has. And it wants to free up a bunch of money for new product development. It’s a clever plan that neatly side-steps the franchise laws in this country. It will also result in a much smaller company.

So far Chrysler hasn’t released a whole lot of details about what it plans to do. But it wants to . . .

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Shhh. Don’t tell the car companies, but every year a smaller percentage of Americans are buying new cars.

No, this has nothing to do with the current slowdown in the economy. It’s part of what I see as a disturbing trend. More on that in a moment.

The problem is that annual new car sales have been stuck in the 16 to 17 million range for nearly a decade. I call it a problem because . . .

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There seems to be an anti-ethanol bias in so much of the media that GM’s recent announcement didn’t get the kind of coverage it deserves. Did you miss it, too? Here’s the news: GM is teaming up with a company called Coskata that’s come up with a breakthrough to make cellulosic ethanol.

But there’s a big difference between their effort and everyone else’s. Coskata’s process goes way beyond using switch grass. It can use . . .

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Click the above image to see photos of all the winners

The Detroit auto show gets unbelievable international coverage from thousands of journalists, and they’re all hoping to come out of the show with some kind of scoop. But with everyone attending the same press conferences and interviewing the same executives, that’s practically impossible to do. And yet, this year they made it easy for me to get my own scoop, because most of the media ignored what may be the most important design awards in the industry.

They call it the Eyes on Design award, and it attracts the top . . .

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First, a confession. I love motor racing. Been following it since I was a kid. And back then you really had to be a fanatic to follow it since the media devoted so little attention to it.

There was no such thing as live TV coverage. The best we got was a . . .

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