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Mazda CX-5 named Japan's Car of The Year, Subaru BR-Z wins "Special Award"

The Mazda CX-5 stamped its Kodo design and SkyActiv technology authority all over the Japan Car of the Year awards, taking the top prize ahead of the Subaru BRZ/Toyota GT 86. It is Mazda's second victory in the last ten years, the 2005 MX-5 claiming the same trophy, and the fourth time the Hiroshima company has won.
The award is decided by 60 local "automotive experts and journalists," and open to any passenger car released in Japan from November 1, 2011 to October 31, 2012 that has sold more than 500 units. Each judge gets 25 votes, his or her top vote getting 10 points, the rest of the points being spread among the judge's choice for the next best four cars.
The second-place getters were the Toyobaru twins with 318 votes, the surprise being they didn't beat or get any closer to the crossover. The Subaru BRZ did claw some mojo back, earning the Special Award given to cars that have made "an exceptional impact." The BMW 3 Series was third overall and won the Import Car of the Year award with plenty of room between it and the second place Range Rover Evoque.

Strange iPhone discovered in guy's Subaru sparks internet mystery

Things can get pretty crazy on the internet, and even the smallest thing can catch people's attention and blow up in an instant. A lot of it is totally bogus or blatant attention seeking, but that's what makes the internet great. Well, that and cat videos. Recently, a story popped up on the internet that is both cool and real. It's the story of a mysterious iPhone, some pro-tier internet detective-ing, and the Takata airbag recall. The story started innocently enough. A guy named Alex Tom took his trusty '09 Subaru Forester into the shop to replace a faulty passenger side airbag under the Takata recall. When he picked the car up, there was a white iPhone 4s sitting on his dashboard. Thing is, the phone wasn't his. The phone was stone dead, but took a charge and booted right up. To complicate matters, it was locked and stuck in airplane mode. When he asked the shop about it, they said they found it behind the dash under the airbag. So now he had a mysterious phone that he couldn't get into to identify. So, like any modern tech-savvy individual, he turned to the internet for help. He posted a picture of the phone on Facebook along with a message asking for help tracking down its owner. What followed was a long, rambling, often hilarious collection of facetious advice, earnest help, photoshops, dumb memes, weird off-topic screeds, and everything else you might expect in a comments thread. Eventually, after getting a name from the phone and enlisting the help of an online dating site, the owner was found and the mystery solved! I'm not going to spoil the ending for you here, because you really need to read the whole saga for yourself. Lets just say that our man Alex had the answer with him all along, and the real treasure was the friends they made along the way. Related Video News Source: The Huffington Post Auto News Humor Subaru iphone Takata airbag recall mystery

Subaru Levorg STI Sport should get us closer to the future WRX

At the Tokyo Motor Show, Subaru showed a "prototype" of the next-generation Levorg, itself a Japanese-market wagon derivative of the Subaru WRX sedan. While it gave us a good idea of what to expect from the next WRX, the Levorg STI Sport that will be shown at Tokyo Auto Salon in January should give us an even better look at the hot Subaru we'll get. This is based on the fact that among current Levorg trims, the STI Sport has a front bumper fascia that's more aggressive and that echoes the design of the WRX, whereas the standard trim is more mellow. So far, Subaru has only released a teaser video of the sportier Levorg. It shows STI badging on the back of the car and on the exhaust tips. There's also a glimpse of the tachometer that shows a redline of just over 6,000 rpm. Since that's lower than the WRX's turbo 2.0-liter engine's 6,500-rpm redline, this is probably the new 1.8-liter turbocharged engine Subaru announced will replace the current base turbo 1.6. It will probably make at least 170 horsepower to match the outgoing model. Based on the current STI Sport engine offerings, this should be the base engine, while the WRX's turbocharged FA20 will be an option. The full reveal of the Levorg STI Sport will come on January 10. Expect further details on mechanical changes as well, which will hopefully include information on a more powerful engine that could appear in the WRX. We wouldn't be surprised if it ended up using a slightly updated version of the current WRX's 2.0-liter FA20 engine, since even the WRX STI is expected to get a more powerful - probably over 300 horsepower - version of that same engine.