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Teen attempts car jump, hits windshield and lands on his feet

I've been compelled to do many things in or around a car, but jumping over one has never quite made the cut. That may be because I have all of the vertical lift of a manatee, but I digress. One enterprising young soul recently looked at a friend's Nissan Sentra and thought, "You know, I can totally leap right over that roof line."
By using what can only be described as Herculean feats of persuasion, he talked one young female friend into driving said Nissan straight for him at around 40 miles per hour while another stood by to film the lunacy. The plan went swimmingly right up until our would be compact-vaulter caught his foot on the hood and bounced into the windshield. Whoops.
But the story doesn't end with a trip to the emergency room. Our hero spun mid-air and actually managed to get his feet under him before coming back to Earth. Impressive. You can watch the hilarity for yourself below, but please, don't even think about trying this yourself.

Nissan to make 85% of the vehicles it sells here in US

We could be in for a big push from Nissan in the manufacturing realm if Vice President of US Sales and Marketing Fred Diaz has anything to say about it. Speaking to the Automotive Press Association recently, Diaz (above) expressed a desire to build some 85 percent of the vehicles Nissan sells to Americans in the US, claiming it will happen "in the very near future." Nissan has already moved to increase exports of its US-built products, and in 2013, it built just over 76 percent of the models it sold in this market within our country's borders.
"Any issues of us taking advantage of the value of the yen, we want to dispel that," Diaz told reporters, pointing out the contentious issue of currency manipulation. There's also the obvious goal of positive PR - Americans like things made in America, and they like companies that invest in America. Diaz is quick to point out that Nissan had done just that: "While a lot of people retrenched [during the recession], instead we leaned into it and we continued investing and in fact made over $5 billion in investments, bringing a lot of production from Japan to the United States and to Mexico," Diaz said, pointing out that Nissan has helped create 8,000 jobs through its investments.
Nissan runs three factories in the US, two in Tennessee and one in Mississippi. Between the three, production is up 22 percent, while the overall exports from the facilities have increased by 100,000 units, Diaz told reporters.

BMW, Hyundai score big in JD Power's first Tech Experience Index

While automakers are quick to brag about winning a JD Power Initial Quality Study award, the reality, as we've pointed out before, is that these ratings are somewhat misleading, since IQS doesn't necessarily distinguish genuine quality issues. JD Power's new Tech Experience Index aims to solve that problem. The new metric takes the same 90-day approach as IQS but focuses exclusively on technology – collision protection, comfort and convenience, driving assistance, entertainment and connectivity, navigation, and smartphone mirroring. It splits the industry up into just seven segments, based loosely on size, which is why the Chevrolet Camaro is in the same division (mid-size) as Kia Sorento and the Mercedes-Benz GLE-Class is in the same segment as the Hyundai Genesis (mid-size premium). It makes for some screwy bedfellows, to be sure. Still, splitting tech experience away from initial quality should allow customers to make more informed and intelligent decisions when buying new vehicles. In the inaugural study, respondents listed BMW and Hyundai as the big winners, with two segment awards – the 2 Series for small premium and the 4 Series for compact premium, and the Genesis for mid-size premium and Tucson for small segment. The Chevrolet Camaro (midsize), Kia Forte (compact), and Nissan Maxima (large) scored individual wins. Ford also had a surprising hit with the Lincoln MKC, which ranked third in the compact premium segment behind the 4 Series and Lexus IS. This is a coup for the Blue Oval, whose woeful MyFord Touch systems made the brand a victim of the IQS' flaws in the early 2010s. But Ford and other automakers might not want to celebrate just yet. According to JD Power, there's still a lot of room for improvement – navigation systems were the lowest-rated piece of tech in the study. Instead, customers repeatedly saluted collision-avoidance and safety systems, giving the category the best marks of the study and listing blind-spot monitoring and backup cameras as two must-have features – 96 percent of respondents said they wanted those two systems in their next vehicle. But this isn't really a surprise. Implementation of safety systems from brand to brand is similar, and they don't require any input from users, unlike navigation and infotainment systems which are frustratingly deep.