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SEMA crowns Mustang, FR-S as this year's hottest cars in the building

After wrapping up the first day of the 2012 SEMA Show, organizers handed out awards for some of the trendiest vehicles on display. Since the whole point of SEMA is to show off new products available in the aftermarket world for use in cars, trucks and SUVs, each year, the show distinguishes the most popular vehicle in various segments. Not surprisingly, this year's Hottest Car and Hottest Sport Compact are the Ford Mustang and Scion FR-S, respectively, while the Ford F-Series brought home the Hottest Truck and the Jeep Wrangler was named the Hottest 4x4-SUV.
More than 2,000 companies are at this year's show, and the display booths represents a "vote" for each car to determing the trendiest vehicles in each of the four categories. It isn't clear if these awards also take cars brought by OEMs into account, but the Mustang and FR-S were definitely well represented by both OEM and aftermarket show versions.
As usual, the OEMs showed up in force at the this year's SEMA Show exhibiting a variety of cars ranging from production-intent cars like the beastly Ford Mustang Cobra Jet to much flashier rides like Scion's Carbon Stealth FR-S.

Airbag fault on 1M recalled Jeeps getting second look from NHTSA [UPDATE]

UPDATE: Here is the statement we received from Chrysler regarding NHTSA's query: "Chrysler Group LLC advised the National Highway Traffic Administration of the six reports and, in accordance with the Company's long-standing practice, is cooperating fully with the resulting investigation. Customer safety is paramount at Chrysler Group. Customers who are concerned may call 1-800-853-1403."
It appears that Jeep's repairs for nearly one million Grand Cherokees from 2002-2004 and Liberty models from 2002-2003 might not be over yet. The vehicles were first recalled in November 2012 because the front airbags could suddenly deploy without being in an accident. Now, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is opening a recall query into them because of reports of inadvertent activation on some already corrected vehicles.
The original problem affected over 919,000 vehicles worldwide, including 744,822 in the US, and was caused by a degrading circuit in the wires that control the airbags. In some cases the airbag warning light would come on just before the premature activation, but in other cases it would just happen. The automaker installed an "in-line jumper harness with an integrated electrical filter" meant to eliminate the power spikes believed to be the cause.

Federal investigations about safety of rear-mounted gas tanks is nothing new

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and Chrysler are currently making waves in our daily news feeds due to a disagreement over the safety of a few million Jeep Liberty and Grand Cherokee models. Specifically, NHTSA has asked Chrysler to recall the SUVs because of the location of their fuel tanks, but you may be interested to know that requests such as this are nothing new.
Besides the two Jeep models, NHTSA has launched investigations over the years in such models as the Ford Crown Victoria (and its police-car counterpart), GM pickups built between 1972 and 1987, and rather famously the Ford Pinto.
Understanding how automakers and NHTSA have dealt with fuel-tank-safety concerns in the past may offer a better understanding of how Chrysler and the government agency will settle their current dispute. Check out the complete article from The Detroit News here.