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Shelby Mustang stars with Ethan Hawke, Selena Gomez in Getaway movie

Car movies. We keep watching them, they keep making them. Despite Fast & Furious 6 still blowing up the box office (No. 1 in theaters for the second straight week) and production on Transformers 4 being well underway (check out the Bugatti Veyron and Corvette Stingray as new cast members), there's still room on the marquee for more car movies. Next one up is an Ethan Hawke joint called Getaway, which prominently co-stars a Ford Shelby GT500. The first trailer for Getaway, which opens in theaters on August 30, was released yesterday and can be watched below.
The movie's plot centers around Hawke's character, former race car driver Brent Magna, who must somehow use this car, what appears to be a generation-old Shelby GT500 Super Snake he "commandeered," to save his wife. The movie's third co-star is Selena Gomez, whose character we're told is the owner of said Shelby. A 20-year-old having a car like this seems a bit far-fetched - especially in Europe - and on paper, this plot looks like it cribs liberally from Charlie Sheen's 1994 The Chase. But all we've got to go on is a brief plot description and the trailer below, so we'll withhold judgment until the studio firmly has our ticket money in its grasp.
The Shelby GT500 is, of course, no stranger to acting. Before this jump to celluloid, the most fearsome of all Mustang models starred in the return of Knight Rider to television on NBC back in 2008. That gig didn't pan out for the car, the show lasting only one season and 17 episodes. In fact, with its casting in Getaway, the Shelby GT500 is one of the few actors who escaped that debacle with a future in show biz.

Ford reveals concept trucks that ultimately became Atlas

The Ford Atlas Concept was one of the quiet success stories of the 2013 Detroit Auto Show, and now Ford has given us a quick glimpse as to how that creation came to be. Designers actually combined two early sketches to build the Atlas. One, called the Bullet Train, is a futuristic, aerodynamic creation, while the other, aptly named the Locomotive, features the squared off proportions we're familiar with.
Once designers settled on the truck's proportions, they began nailing down exactly which attributes they wanted the final design to have. The Concept's notched windshield originated as a forked glass roof that seamlessly transitioned into the windscreen.
Likewise, designers wanted to fit the truck's tailgate with a storage compartment for tools and a first aid kit, but settled on the dual-purpose step/cargo cradle. Interestingly enough, the concept's active aero shutter wheels actually originated in some of the earliest sketches. Check out the photos and slides here for a closer look.

DoJ fines Japanese parts firms $740M in massive automotive price-fixing scandal

Nine Japanese suppliers have pleaded guilty in US court over charges of price fixing in the automotive parts industry, resulting in the Department of Justice doling out a total of $740 million of fines, according to a report from Bloomberg. The scandal, which has resulted in General Motors, Ford, Toyota and Chrysler spending up to $5 billion on inflated parts and driving up prices on 25 million vehicles has sent the DoJ hustling into investigations. "The conduct this investigation uncovered involved more than a dozen separate conspiracies aimed at the U.S. economy," Attorney General Eric Holder (pictured above) said during yesterday's press conference.
As the investigation stands, the DoJ has issued $1.6 billion in fines against 20 companies and 21 individual executives, with 17 of the execs headed to prison. Deputy Assistant Attorney General Scott Hammond said, "The breadth of the conspiracies brought to light today are as egregious as they are pervasive. They involve more than a dozen separate conspiracies operating independently but all sharing in common that they targeted US automotive manufacturers."
Big-name suppliers indicted in the investigation include Mitsubishi Electric, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Hitachi Automotive and Mitsuba Corporation. A list of fines and other corporations named in the investigation is available at Bloomberg.