Ford is hoping history can repeat itself with the upcoming launch of the next-generation Fusion four-door.

It’s been more than a quarter century since the maker revolutionized automotive design with the original Taurus sedan. Its windswept styling helped Ford dominate the huge midsize market segment, and led most competitors to migrate to more aerodynamic designs. The new Fusion, which makes its debut at the Detroit Auto Show next month, will borrow many of the visual cues of the recent Ford Evos concept car and, if early reviews are any indication, could help the maker topple the imports that have dominated the midsize segment over the last two decades.

SALT LAKE CITY — A truck driver who won a Lamborghini worth about $300,000 in a convenience store contest crashed the sports car six hours after he got it, and he now plans to sell the 640-horsepower convertible because he can’t afford the insurance or taxes.

“I already had offers on it. I’m going to sell it,” David Dopp said Wednesday. “I have bills more important than a Lamborghini. I’ve got a family to support.”

Dopp, a 34-year-old truck driver for Frito-Lay, spun out of control just a few hours after taking the keys to the Murcielago Roadster that he won in a “Joe Schmo to Lambo” contest sponsored by Maverik convenience stores.

Updated at 4 p.m. ET: The government’s transportation safety experts recommended Tuesday to ban all American drivers from using portable electronic devices — including cell phones, even if you use a hands-free device.

The recommendation, which isn’t binding but which is likely to influence the decisions of Congress and state legislatures in writing new safety laws, makes only two exceptions: You could still use GPS navigation devices, and you could use your cell phone in an emergency.

“No call, no text, no update, is worth a human life,” Deborah Hersman, chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board, said at a news conference in Washington.

(Reuters) – Ford Motor Co has recalled nearly 129,000 of its Mercury Milan and top-selling Ford Fusion in the United States because their 17-inch steel wheels may fall off, U.S. safety regulators said on Friday.

In some vehicles from model years 2010 and 2011, the wheel studs may fracture and make the car shake. If ignored, the wheels may fall off a moving car, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said in a posting on its website.

Ford, the No. 2 U.S. automaker, said the issue may stem from wheel mounting pads or rear brake discs that have been incorrectly built and cannot support the wheel.

MONROE, Mich. — A blast that turned a vehicle along a Michigan street into a blackened shell and seriously injured an attorney and his two sons was the result of a car bomb, police said Wednesday.

Emergency responders rushed to the site of the Tuesday evening explosion near a highway underpass in Monroe, about 35 miles southwest of Detroit, the Monroe Police Department said. The vehicle’s three occupants were taken to St. Vincent Medical Center in Toledo, Ohio, about 20 miles south of Monroe. They were listed in serious condition Wednesday.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — Italian automaker Pagani was to begin selling its $1 million, 700 horsepower Huayra supercar in the U.S. later this year but federal safety regulators have said “Not so fast.”

Pagani had applied for an exemption from federal auto safety rules requiring child-safe “advanced” airbags, arguing that complying with the rule would have caused “substantial economic hardship,” according to documents from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Members of a House of Representatives subcommittee on Wednesday accused the Obama administration of making politically motivated decisions in picking the winners and losers in the General Motors and Chrysler bankruptcies.

Subcommittee chairman Jim Jordan, a Republican from the Urbana area, said the intervention in GM’s bankruptcy established a dangerous precedent. He juxtaposed the success of GM’s Lordstown plant, which remained open, with the closure of a GM facility in his district in Mansfield to illustrate his point that the government decided who would endure the restructuring.

Izaiah Wallis lies on his back, machine tubes hooked to his small body, legs stretched out and toes curled.

A white sheet of paper hangs on an aquarium-themed painted wall behind his bed, bearing a request written on his behalf by his grandmother.

“If you love me, please don’t kiss me,” it reads in blue marker. “I don’t want to end up back in the hospital.”

Baby steps.

The Vista, Calif., toddler who became paralyzed last year after a drunk-driving teenager struck him and his grandfather can now voluntarily move his legs, his doctor announced this week, a significant breakthrough in the 2-year-old’s recovery.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — The Chevrolet Volt earned a top five-star rating in thee federal government’s new, tougher crash test rating system.

Under the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s new rating system, all vehicles are given a single rating of one to five stars encompassing front and side impact safety as well as resistance to rollovers.

The Volt earned four stars for occupant protection in front-end crashes, five stars for side crash protection and five stars for resistance to rolling over.

The Volt is an electrically powered plug-in car. It can go about 35 miles on a charge, according to EPA estimates, before needing to turn on its gasoline engine to generate power.

DETROIT – With a few computer keystrokes in an office at its headquarters, Chrysler Group LLC sent $7.6 billion to the U.S. and Canadian governments on Tuesday, paying off most of the bailout money that saved the company from financial disaster just two years ago.

The repayment — expected for weeks — is a huge step in the automaker’s unlikely comeback. Chrysler went from a company that almost ran out of cash and survived a 2009 bankruptcy to one that is revamping its aging lineup and last quarter posted its first net profit in five years, a modest $116 million.