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IIHS says these are the safest cars of 2013

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) has revealed its annual list of Top Safety Picks, an award that highlights automobiles it says offer "superior crash protection." A new and still more significant award, the Top Safety Pick+ honor, is given to those vehicles that earn good ratings for occupant protection in four out of five areas of measure. And while some 117 vehicles were given the TSP seal of approval for 2013, just 13 passed muster for TSP+.
To be fair, IIHS only evaluated 29 vehicles with its new testing procedures for TSP+ (we'd expect that the number of qualified cars will rise substantially for 2014). Luxury and Near Luxury midsize cars were the first groups evaluated, followed by midsizers in the Moderately Priced Cars category - unsurprisingly, it's only midsize cars that you'll find among the class this year.
Only two luxury sedans made the list of 13 for 2013: the Acura TL and Volvo S60. The other 11 cars on the list included entries from domestic, Japanese and German car makers: Dodge Avenger, Chrysler 200, Ford Fusion, Honda Accord (sedan and coupe), Kia Optima (but not its close kin, the Hyundai Sonata, strangely), Nissan Altima, Subaru Legacy and Outback, Suzuki Kizashi and the Volkswagen Passat all made the grade.

Ford family keeps special voting rights

Ford Motor Company has a dual-class stock structure of Class A and Class B shares. The roughly three billion Class A shares are for the general public like you and me, while the roughly 71 million Class B shares are all owned by the Ford family. Each Class A share gets the shareholder one vote, each Class B share is worth 16 votes, the result being that Common Stock holders control about 60 percent of the company while the Ford family controls 40 percent even though it holds far fewer shares. The only way that could ever change would be if the Fords sell their Class B shares, but even so, Class B shares revert to Class A when sold outside the family, so they'd have to sell a whole bunch of them.
A contingent of Class A shareholders think the dual-class system is unfair, and for the past few years a vote's been held during the annual shareholders meeting to end it. It has failed every time, as it just did again during the meeting held this week. A smidge over 33 percent voted to end the dual system, outvoted by the 67 percent who are happy with the way Ford is going - unsurprising in view of a corporate turnaround that will be part of business-class curricula for years to come.
On the sidelines, Ford elected Ellen R. Marram to the post of independent director, the first woman to hold the job. The former Tropicana CEO and 20-year Ford board member replaces retiring board member Irvine Hockaday who helped bring Alan Mulally to the CEO position.

Hennessey Ford GT sets 267.6-MPH record at Texas Mile [w/videos]

The record-setting Hennessey-powered camouflage Ford GT we showed you at this time last year headed back to the Texas Mile and managed to bring home yet another record. As you may recollect, last year saw Mark Heidraker's machine sprint to a record 257.7 mph thanks to propulsion from its twin-turbo 5.7-liter V8. The big mill sucks down race gas, and this year the creation pulled off a 267.6-mph run over the weekend. That feat set a new record for the event. Something tells us neither Heidraker nor Hennessey are done squeezing more thrust from this machine.
This particular Ford GT has already gone through a number of permutations. Hennessey started by tweaking the factory supercharger set up before abandoning the blower in favor of two turbos. Since then, the crew has poked and prodded it to coerce as much grunt as possible out of the car. We expect Hennessey will probably come out with a video of the record-setting run shortly, but in the meantime, you can see a couple of videos of the car's runs in Texas below (one of which actually captures the record run). Enjoy.