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Throughout France on New Year's Eve, 1,147 cars met crispy deaths at the hands of arsonists. That's almost 300 cars more than the previous year.

Lighting cars on fire as a form of protest has been a habit among youth in France since the 70s, but ever since the protests of 2005, after two boys were killed in an electrical station while hiding from police, burning cars has become a go-to political statement.

A man named Lonnie Ray Davis was pulled over by Michigan police. When they searched his car, they found an open alcohol container, crack, a wad of cash, a stun gun, and a .38 caliber handgun. He was, of course, arrested. But the reason they pulled him over has become a constitutional law issue: Davis had a Tweety Bird ornament dangling from his rear view mirror, and Michigan law forbids dangling things that "obstruct the vision of the driver of the vehicle."

A gas tax is about more than putting liquid into your tank and subtracting a higher amount from your bank account. A gas tax is -- just like CAFE and hybrids and $25 billion set aside to finance fuel efficient technologies -- about reworking and redefining our entire system of private transportation. And since that system is most certainly going to redefined, it is no surprise that the National Commission on Surface Transportation Infrastructure Financing has recommended a jump in the federal fuel tax.

Have you ever been on the road and hungry, and thought "By golly, if I only had a microwave I could heat... anything... and eat it!" Well, neither have we. But that hasn't stopped Maplin Electronics from coming up with a portable, 12-volt microwave that you can operate through your cigarette lighter or hooked up directly to your car battery.

var digg_url = 'http://digg.com/autos/Why_not_Gas_is_cheap_PIC'; Life is stranger than fiction. If anyone tries to tell you differently, simply point to the Canadian man who built the truck you see above, from scratch. Francois Couture, known in his posts as "H150", showed up in the Full Size Bronco forum on September 17, 2004 with a simple query: "Since I'm a Ford nut but always wanted a HUMMER but don't have lots of money, I decided to fabricate my own [based] on Ford truck frame..."

As a political statement against Maryland politician E. J. Pikpkin's run for national office, Charles Richter painted a swastika on his car next to the words "Vote Pipken" and parked it legally on a public street. The same day it was parked, a sheriff's deputy ticketed the car as abandoned. Two days later, the car was towed from the same spot. When Richter refused to pay the impound lot to get his car back, it was crushed. Richter has brought suit against the deputy, and a federal judge has just ruled that the lawsuit can go forward.

The details aren't clear yet, but a fire at a Flint, Michigan home is being preliminarily attributed to spinning tires. When Samantha Hendricks returned home Tuesday evening, she had a hard time getting up her icy driveway. Giving the car a healthy bit of gas to get up the slick pavement, as most of us do, she created a fair bit of wheelspin. Some time after parking the car in the garage, the people inside began to smell smoke and discovered it was coming from the car. Unable to extinguish the source of the smoke, the car caught on fire and took the entire house -- and all of the gifts and possessions inside -- with it. Investigators haven't yet determined if it was the spinning tires that caused the fire, but the burn pattern indicates that it had something to do with the car. The question is, what could it be?

According to a grand jury indictment, a New Mexico prostitution ring mastermind was trying to extort two-time Indianapolis 500 winner Al Unser, Jr. for $750,000 over a videotape. Bobby McMullin, the ringleader, allegedly had an unflattering video of Unser that he promised to release to the public if Little Al didn't pay him. The racer signed a letter agreeing to pay an unspecified amount for the tape, and indeed some payments were made, but authorities don't know how much money changed hands.

Whenever we drive from Los Angeles to Phoenix, we always stop at the Flying J in Blythe, California to refuel - and that might mean "refueling" on coffee, trail mix and a rented audiobook instead of gasoline.