USA TODAY Drive On: A conversation about the cars and trucks we drive

T-Rex tears through roads -- but at a cost

It's cool looking, pricey and has a great name -- the  T-Rex.

This $49,995 three-wheel vehicle is made by Capagna Motors of Canada. It's small and light, yet has a Kawasaki 1351cc engine that produces 197 horsepower. It's capable zero to 60 mph in 3.9 seconds. Top speed is 144 miles per hour. The engine gets a respectible 22 miles per gallon.

Capagna will make 105 T-Rexes this year. It's the latest in a series of three-wheeled motorcycles to hit the market.

Papa John finds the Chevrolet Camaro he sold 25 years ago -- and pays $275,000 to buy it back

Papa John has found his old Chevrolet Camaro, but it's costing the pizza king $275,000 to get it back. And it's changed a lot from the days when he sold it 25 years ago.

"Papa" John Schnatter has been searching the country for months looking for the 1971 Chevrolet Z28 Camaro that he drove as a teenager. As the story goes, he sold it to raise money for the family business that eventually became his Papa John's pizza chain.

Schnatter offered a $250,000 reward to anyone who would sell him back the car. The search was beginning to look fruitless until a few days ago. It was then that he found the current owner, Jeff Robinson of Flatwoods, Ky., who had converted the old car into a dragster.

So Schnatter has his old car back, including paying a $25,000 finder's fee to the family that tipped him to its whereabouts. But Robinson, who bought the car five years ago, converted the Camaro into a dragster with a 540-inch V-8 engine, big rear tires and little front ones, a hulking hood scoop and fewer of the body graphics of the earlier age. It also has the roll cage of the dragster, but it's street legal. Still, here's how Schnatter was sure that it was his old car:

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Maserati unveils 433-horsepower GranCabrio convertible

Maseratiis giving us a look today at its first four-seat convertible, the GranCabrio. The formal unveiling will be Sept. 15 at the Frankfurt Motor Show.

The GranCabrio combines Pininfarina styling with a 4.7-liter, 433-horsepower V-8. With the longest wheelbase on the market, the GranCabrio will offer decent comfort in the rear seats, not just the front, the Italian luxury maker says.

The car will go on sale in Europe in the winter, and could come to the U.S. as soon as next spring. No price yet, but start saving - a lot! It joins the Quattroporte and GranTurismo in the Maserati lineup. 

Photos by Maserati

Couple gets married and takes a new last name - right off their car

Meet the Fords.

Not those Fords, the Fords of Dearborn, of the Model T and the Thunderbird. This is a pair of new Fords, a couple who became so connected to their car that they decided to adopt its name as their own. We're talking about Chris and Jaime.

Jaime Case started a blog leading up to her wedding with Chris Hodges, an urban planner. She decided to write about their experiences of taking a big trip in connection with their attempt to get hitched without spending a fortune. Since a road trip was involved, they managed to wrangle a free Ford Fusion.

Rather than simply adopt her husband's last name, the couple decided to come up with an entirely new one: Ford. The reasoning went like this:

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Joining the parade? Honda electric car due in U.S. by 2015, report says

Automakers don't want to be left out of the electric-car parade, even those reluctant about the technology. Now comes Honda.

Honda plans to develop an electric car for the U.S. market by around 2015, Reuters and AP are reporting, based on a story in Japan's Nikkei newspaper on Saturday. A spokesman for the company, Japan's No. 2 automaker, said it was developing an electric car but had not decided when to launch it.

A prototype could be unveiled at the Tokyo Motor Show in October, Nikkei said.

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BMW's Mini is trying to find out how long you can go topless

At Drive On, we love the ridiculous. And we love it even more when the ridiculous becomes a cheap automaker stunt.

So there's a lot to love this week about BMW's Mini. The fun car's designers took up valuable space on the dashboard with something called the Openometer, a gauge which has the sole purpose of telling you how long your convertible top has been open. Perhaps it was inevitable, but now Mini has created a contest to find the Mini driver who keeps the car's top down the longest. So if you can't win the Indy 500, at least you'll have this claim to automotive fame ...

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One last beloved but battered truck as 'cash for clunkers' ends today

No heater, no horn, no wipers and the headlights worked "most" of the time. Yet John Kounalis of Flower Mound, Texas, is going to miss his old Dodge truck. Turned in under the "cash-for-clunkers" program, he's now driving a new Ford Escape SUV.

"Offer a heartfelt eulogy for the love of my life, and if you don't mind, don't refer to him as a clunker," John says.  "His feelings may be hurt as he crumbles away under the jaws of a crushing machine."

One thing he may not miss: The old truck's front seat was shot. John had to sit on a blanket to keep the springs from poking his behind.

Photos provided by John Kounalis

Motorcycles and more! Check out Fast Hawg's bike posts on Drive On's Forum

If you haven't been through the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum in Birmingham, Ala., reader Fast Hawg is ready to give you some thoughts and photos of some of his favorite bikes at Drive On's Forum. He loves his motorcycles - and great motorcycle rides. He's looking for anybody who cares about bikes and wants to know where you love to go riding. Fast Hawg has Georgia on his mind, so let's hear about cool rides in the rest of the country.

Worth a look. Just click on the Forum button at the top of the page.

Photo of Harley-Davidson enthusiasts Billy and Roma Singleton, of Prattville, Ala., as they look at vintage motorcycles at the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum in 2003. The museum  possesses one of the largest collections of vintage and modern-day motorcycles in the world.  Tamika Moore/Birmingham News via AP

With 'cash for clunkers' nearly gone, Japanese car models emerge as the big winners

Toyota handily outsold General Motors and Ford to become the biggest beneficiary among automakers under the government's "cash-for-clunkers" program, figures released Friday by the Transportation Department show.

Toyota accounted for 19.2% of the 489,269 vehicles sold under the program - with barely three days remaining. That's nearly one out of five new cars. GM has 17.7% and Ford has 15%, followed by Honda, Chrysler, Nissan, Hyundai and Kia.

Among the most popular vehicles, Ford's Focus subcompact slipped out of the first-place position it held earlier in the program. Seven out of 10 of the top-selling models are from Japanese makers but the government says that 54% of all the cars sold in the program were U.S. made. Interesting that GM is second in overall sales among automakers, yet does not have a single model on the top 10. The lineup looks like this:

1. Toyota Corolla

2. Honda Civic

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Here are the 'cash for clunkers' new cars that will be hardest to find this weekend

If you own an old car, this weekend is your last chance to stake your claim in the "cash-for-clunkers" giveaway.

Just one problem: Dealer stocks are so depleted at this point that you may not be able to find the new fuel-thrifty car that you want. The program, thankfully, was modified to allow buyers to order a new car, rather than have to buy one in dealer stock, to be eligible for the program. The good news is you won't have to settle for a new vehicle that you aren't crazy about. The bad news is you may have to wait to get it.

Which vehicles eligible under the program are in shortest supply? Automotive News just published its monthly inventory data from Aug. 1. It shows how dramatically the clunkers program has shrunk the backlog of unsold vehicles. It's measured in "days supply" -- the estimated number of days of inventory that automakers have on hand before it all runs out. As you can see, Jeep Patriot, pictured above, has almost disappeared. The industry norm for healthy - no shortages yet not bloated - inventory is 60 days, as a rule of thumb. Here's what we found among those automakers who report by model (Toyota, for example, does not):

Vehicle     Days Supply (Aug. 1)    Days Supply (July 1)

Jeep Patriot  7     92

Dodge Avenger    15   87

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