Hasta La Gadget!

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration wants automakers to put backup cameras on all cars starting with 2014 models. NHTSA says it’s to prevent traffic deaths of pedestrians, especially children. It will also reduce minor rear end collisions while backing. 

With less than a year left in its run, now seems like a pretty good time to check out a live taping of The Oprah Winfrey Show–after all, chances seem pretty good that you’ll walk away with, say, a brand new car. Audience members present for an episode taped yesterday were all given their very own 2012 Volkswagen Beetle.

The car hasn’t actually come out yet, heck, VW has yet to actually unveil the thing (the above shot is an older model), but Winfrey promised that, as soon as the vehicle hits the market, everyone who showed up will be driving away in their own brand new car.

VW’s U.S. chief exec Jonathan Browning, oddly, took the opportunity to compare Oprah to a car, “Oprah Winfrey and the Volkswagen Beetle are two American icons, so when the Oprah show approached us with this incredible opportunity to share her Beetle experience with deserving viewers, we instantly wanted to be a part of it.”

Winfrey drives her own VW Bug–she highlighted the vehicle during her on-going “Favorite Things” series. This is the second time Winfrey has given away a car. As Bloomberg points out, when she gave out Pontiac G6s, audience members had trouble paying income taxes. This time out, the show will be helping out with that as well.

A hybrid owned by rock legend Neil Young is being blamed for a San Francisco warehouse fire. The November 9th fire, which wiped out paintings, instruments, and vintage cars owned by the singer, is being blamed on a battery powered 1959 Lincoln Continental. The LincVolt served as the inspiration for last year’s Fork in the Road.

Young places the blame for the blame squarely on human error, not on the battery-powered vehicle. “The car was plugged in to charge and left unattended,” Young told the press. “The wall charging system was not completely tested and had never been left unattended. A mistake was made. It was not the fault of the car.”

While firefighters were able to safe most of the goods stored in the space, the damage from the fire totaled around $1 million.

According to The Guardian, Young plans to build a similar vehicle with parts from a 1958 model that he received as a gift from him wife on his 65th birthday. “Barn’s burnt down,” Young cited a quote from Mizuta Masahide, a Japanese poet. “Now I can see the moon.”

His mission of exposing the dangers of fossil fuels remains unchanged.

The Bugatti Veyron, the world’s fastest and most expensive sports car, got a unique fashion treatment this week, thanks to SkinzWraps, Epson printing technology, and Avery Dennison. Designed as a show piece for this weeks Specialty Market Equipment Association convention in Las Vegas, the dressed up Bugatti became the most expensive car to ever sport the custom vinyl wraps.