As gas prices hit an all time high with oil now hitting $126 a barrel, automakers are having a hard time moving cars out of the showrooms. With sales down 2.5% last year to 16.1 million cars sold, automakers are now offering incentives that have never been seen before by the industry.

Chrysler recently announced that it will offer buyers of new Chrysler, Jeep and Dodge customers a gas card to immediately lower their gas price to $2.99 a gallon.

To keep from sales to go down further and to save new vehicles from premature death, automakers are offering incentives on cars considered by auto experts as reliable and of good quality.

So if you’re one of the few in the market for a new car, be sure to check out Forbes list of Top 11 America’s Best New Car Incentives.

Click through for the list.

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The cost of owning a vehicle goes beyond the purchase price. Expenses like insurance and maintenance can add up.

But most of all, it must start life with a sticker price well below even the most affordable luxury cars. A low purchase price holds down insurance premiums, taxes and fees, financing costs, and, especially, depreciation.

That’s why the priciest car on our list of the Top 10 Least Expensive Cars to Own is the tenth ranked Honda Civic DX, which starts at just $15,010.

Click through for the list of Top Least Expensive Cars to Own.

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Nissan announced today that just one month after it started booking orders for the new 2009 GT-R in Europe, Nissan has received over 1,500 for the supercar.

Dealers started taking orders on April 2nd while on-line orders began just 2 days later. Dealers have already taken a year’s worth of supply in one month with 950 orders coming from the UK alone.

Deliveries of the 2009 Nissan GT-R are scheduled to start in March of 2009. The U.S. allocation for the 2008 model year is sold out and 60% of the 2009 model year has already been pre-sold. Deliveries for the U.S. start this July.

Click through for the press release.

Nissan GT-R:

   

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Finding out what appeals to female drivers takes more than just putting on a skirt and high heels. But that can be a start.

To find out which vehicles women prefer, we compiled two lists. One looks at luxury vehicles most driven by women, and the other ranks the overall top 10 vehicles most driven by women, regardless of whether they are luxury or non-luxury.

Click through for the list of the Top 10 Cars Driven by Women.

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While Nissan is out flaunting its new 7:29 run at the Nurburgring Nordschleife with the GT-R, Chevrolet is working hard to beat that time. Last week GM announced the official specs on the 2009 Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 with 638-hp and 604 lb-ft of torque. It later released a video of the car hitting a top speed of 205-mph.

According to InsideLine, GT-R’s happy moment will pretty short lived. In an interview with Corvette’s Chief Engineer Tadge Juechter, the man behind the ZR1 stated that the full production model will be capable of lapping the Nurburgring in “Seven minutes, twenty-something seconds.”

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According to a recent dyno test by MotorTrend, the 2009 Nissan GT-R is producing about 507-hp and 500 lb-ft of torque. Nissan originally recorded a lap time of 7:38 around the famous Nurburgring in Germany when it officially unveiled the car last year.

Today Nissan announced the chief test driver Tochio Suzuki hit the Nurburgring again on April 16 and 17, bringing in a best lap time of 7:29. The time was one of the fastest laps ever achieved by a production car despite damp conditions on two corners. 

Lexus; you have a lot to live up to with LF-A. Get to work. Honda; get a move on with the NSX.

Click through for Nissan’s press release.

2009 Nissan GT-R:

   

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Carlos Ghosn, Nissan’s CEO thinks that the sluggish U.S. automotive market won’t recover until 2011

“The U.S. is slumping in 2008,” Ghosn said today at a conference in Portugal. “At best, in 2009 and 2010 we’ll see a stabilization.”

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A group of 80 North American automotive journalists were invinted to the Nissan 360 global product review where the automaker discussed its current and future lineup. Probably the most interesting thing the journalists saw there was a sculpture that hung on the wall of a meeting room, supposedly hinting at the next-generation Nissan Z.

Mazda did something similar in the 1980s when it introduced the Mazda Miata. Mazda got a huge kick out of how hundreds of journalists visited the R&D facility but never noticed the secret roadster that everyone was talking about was hanging there in plain sight.

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Legendary game designer Kazunori Yamauchi, creator and producer of the Gran Turismo series, is eagerly awaiting the release of his latest creation, GT5, which is expected to hit the stores sometime in 2009. The latest addition to the Gran Turismo series is the Gran Turismo 5 Prologue Spec II which features 16-player online races, over 70 cars, 6 tracks and 12 layouts.

In a recent stunt to bring fans closer the game, Yamauchi, took the 2009 Nissan GT-R to the Nurburgring in Germany in an attempt to push Godzilla to a speed of 193mph.

Check out this amazing video as the GT TVfolks follow Yamauchi on his mission to push the GT-R to its limits.

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We definitely would love to see Adam Corolla and Jay Leno host the U.S. version of Top Gear, however Leno has already turned down the offer fearing that Americans will ruin the show for what it’s worth.

Nonetheless you can see Leno’s take on the latest and greatest at his Jay Leno’s Garage website. Today, Leno gives us his take on the new 2009 Nissan GT-R.

Refresher: Power comes from a a 3.8 L twin-turbocharged DOHC V6 engine that produces 473 horsepower and a peak torque of 430 lb-ft. 0-60 comes in at 3.5 seconds.

Click through for the video.

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Caught earlier this month.InisideLine has now posted a video of the 2010 Nissan GT-R V-Spec circling the Nurburgring in Germany. The lighter and faster V-Spec will produce more than 500-hp and is expected to be 300 pounds lighter than the original GT-R.

According to engineers on the scene the Nissan GT-R V-Spec went around the Nurburgring in less than 7:25.

Click through for the video.

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The MotorTrend folks point out an interesting fact. The Lexus LF-A has disappeared from the Nurburgring tracks ever since the production Nissan GT-R hit the road. Even Chevrolet remains there with the Corvette ZR1 bringing in lap times of 7:40.

It could very well be that Toyota’s schedule for testing the Lexus LF-A. However, with Toyota claiming that the Lexus LF-A will be the company’s first real and extreme supercar, and with the technical specs and testing results of the GT-R, the LF-A has a lot to live up to.

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Expanding on their product shareing alliance, Nissan and Chrysler announced today that Chrysler will begin builing pickup trucks for Nissan while Nissan will produce subcompact cars for Chrysler.

Under the agreement Nissan will discontinue building its Titan pickup when Chrysler begins production of Nissan trucks in 2011. Chrysler in return will get a Nissan-based compact car which will be produced in Nissan’s Oppama, Japan factory. The car will arrive in North America and Europe in 2010.

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