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Finalists for 2014 Green Car of the Year announced

The list of finalists for the 2014 Green Car of the Year has been announced, and in a genuinely bizarre twist, there's only one hybrid and no electric vehicles among the five contestants, despite the arrival of cars like the BMW i3 and Tesla Model S. Taking the place of the EVs are a pair of diesels, repping a technology that last won a Green Car of the Year award in 2009, when the Audi A3 TDI took the title. No diesel was in the running for last year's award.
Naturally, both of the diesel finalists are fielded by the Germans - with BMW's 328d and Audi's A6 TDI getting the nod. In the case of the 3 Series, BMW installed a 2.0-liter, turbodiesel, capable of delivering 180 horsepower and 280 pound-feet of torque, while returning 45 miles per gallon on the highway. Audi and its larger, 3.0-liter, V6 turbodiesel produce quite a bit more grunt, with 240 hp and 428 lb-ft of grunt, but net a very impressive 38 mpg on the highway in the A6.
Finalists for this year's awards include two diesels, three gas-powered cars and a plug-in hybrid.

Consumer Reports' first motorcycle reliability report finds Japanese brands ahead

Consumer Reports has released its first ever study of motorcycle reliability, and students of its ratings on cars might notice a suspicious similarity - Japanese brands require fewer repairs than the leading American or German brands.
The study analyzed the reliability of 4,680 bikes owned by CR subscribers and found that Yamaha had the best ratings, with just one in ten bikes built between 2009 and 2012 requiring a repair over a four-year period. The makers of the R1 and R6 sport bikes were closely followed by Kawasaki and Honda, while one out of every four of the rumbling bikes from Harley-Davidson experienced an issue. BMW had the worst rating of the brands represented, with one in three bikes having problems.
According to CR, neither Suzuki nor Triumph owners provided enough information for a reliable rating. Based on the responses received, though, Suzuki would have finished with the other Japanese brands and Triumph, being English, would have been one of the less reliable makes.

2015 BMW X4 slides in on the diagonal starting at $45,625 in the US

If BMW has shown us anything, it's a knack for creating niches and expanding its product portfolio. Go back to the early '90s and it had essentially four models: the 3 Series, 5 Series, 6 Series and 7 Series. End of list. Since then, the Bavarian automaker has not only taken on Mini and Rolls-Royce, but has expanded its own range of models exponentially. You can chalk a big part of that up to crossovers, and another sizable chunk to giving existing models a different roofline and calling it something new. What we have here is a prime example of both.
Previewed in concept form the better part of a year ago at the Shanghai Motor Show, the slantback version of the X3 (and the baby brother to the X6) is now here in full production guise. Mechanically it's essentially the same as the new X3 on which it's based, but amps up the "sport" at the expense of the "utility" part of the SUV equation.
BMW will undoubtedly offer a wide range of powertrain configurations in markets around the world, but back in the United States it'll be offered in two specs: the X4 xDrive28i, packing a 2.0-liter inline-four with 240 horsepower and a $45,625 sticker price (including destination), or the X4 xDrive35i with the 300hp 3.0-liter six and a $48,925 MSRP. Either way, you're getting an eight-speed automatic and all-wheel drive.