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Watch a trio of Santas ride up Mulholland Drive

Santa Claus might have his eight reindeer - or nine, when it's foggy - to help him deliver presents in most parts of the world, but in southern California, it looks like he's traded up from Dasher, Dancer, Prancer and company to BMW, Yamaha and Ducati. RNickeyMouse is usually the place to check out spectacular motorcycle crashes on video along LA's Mulholland Drive, but a recent video caught a trio of Santas carving up the iconic, twisty road.
The three Santas are together, riding what appears to be a BMW S1000RR, Yamaha R1 and a hard-to-tell custom bike that could be a Ducati 1098. The video, which is posted below, also catches a bonus Santa riding solo on another S1000RR. Happy Christmas to all, and to all a cool bike!

BMW names new head of M division

BMW's performance division has been run by Dr. Friedrich Nitschke since 2011, developing, among other products, the new M3 and M4. But soon the good doctor will be retiring, and BMW has just named his successor.
Taking Nitschke's place as chairman of BMW M GmbH will be Franciscus van Meel (pictured at right), who until recently served as managing director of Audi Quattro GmbH - the rival outfit that makes Ingolstadt's performance models, including the R8 supercar and RS line of performance models.
Van Meel will join BMW on October 1, presumably to learn the ropes from Nitschke before the 59-year-old executive steps down at the end of the year. Back in January, Audi named Heinz Peter Hollwerweger as head of Quattro GmbH and reassigned van Meel to its Beijing R&D center, a role which evidently didn't suit him as well as creating Autobahn-storming German muscle cars.

BMW-Toyota joint sports car project is on like Donkey Kong

It's official - there will be a jointly developed sports car from BMW and Toyota. While the two auto giants signed a Memorandum of Understanding that pledged to pursue "joint development of architecture and components for a future sports vehicle" back in June of 2012, in the interim, it has remained unclear how those plans had been progressing. BMW has finally officially confirmed that the German and Japanese manufacturers will be codeveloping a pair of sports cars in addition to pursuing other disciplines including fuel cell systems and lightweight technologies.
"We have agreed on a joint architecture for a sports car. What is important is that there will be two different vehicles that are authentic to the two brands," BMW Development Chief Herbert Diess told Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Reuters is reporting. This is a very, very big step for both brands, but now the speculation can officially begin as to what the products of this agreement will look like.
There's ample reason to believe that the BMW-Toyota tie up will result in a Supra successor based on comments made by the chief engineer of the GT86/FR-S program, Tatsuya Tada, back in August. Follow that with a rumor from earlier this month that Toyota could debut a Supra concept car at the upcoming Detroit Auto Show later this month, and we could be seeing the fruits of this partnership sooner rather than later.