Rinaldo Rinolfi may just have something up his sleeve to make Fiat SpA’s partnership with Chrysler Group LLC work.

The 62-year-old engineer, who designed the Fiat diesel engine in the 1990s that became an industry standard and powers some of Europe’s most energy-efficient cars, has a new invention he says will cut fuel consumption by at least 10 percent. His work is at the heart of the Fiat technology that Chrysler said was worth $10 billion when they formed their alliance.

“We needed to do something radical with the gasoline engine,” Rinolfi said in an interview at Fiat’s research center in the northern city of Turin, the company’s headquarters.

Chief Executive Officer Sergio Marchionne, seeking to turn around Chrysler after two previous owners failed, has engineers flying between Detroit and Italy every other week on the project as Fiat prepares to offer models that meet stricter consumption and emissions levels required by President Barack Obama.

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As the 4th of July car-buying weekend approaches, dealerships throughout the country are encouraged by a series of positive signs in the market. Consumers encouraged by promising economic signs headed back to dealer showrooms last month, but sales sputtered in late June as prospective buyers waited for the government to introduce its cash-for-clunkers incentives. Experts say that people are holding onto their old beaters in hopes of tapping into some of that “clunkers cash.”

June’s selling rate slipped below the pace in May and was down sharply from last year, but auto executives said earlier this week that the market had begun a gradual recovery, supported by strengthening consumer confidence.

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More good news if you like higher mileage, lower emissions and cars graced by three-pointed stars. Mercedes-Benz will soon be offering not one, but two new BlueEfficiency diesel engines in their C-Class models. The C-Class is the “baby Mercedes”; they look like a real Mercedes, only smaller. Act like them too. Screwed together like a bank vault, lots of high tech gizmos, that sort of thing.

And now if the C-Class is your kind of car, you get three new diesel engine choices. There’s a 2.2-liter 4-banger diesel available with a single turbo that puts out 170 hp and a beefy 295 lb-ft of torque, and another 4 cylinder, this one featuring dual turbos, 204 hp and 369 lb-ft of torque. Either engine sounds like fun, but I’ll take the second one, thank you very much.

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Pros

• Better fuel economy than most V6 engines in its class
• Comfortable ride and responsive handling makes you forget that you’re driving a truck
• Intelligent shift patterns from the 5-speed gearbox account for smooth performance

Cons

• Interior is overdue for a makeover
• Third rowing seating suitable only for munchkins, yoga masters, or inflicting torture upon backseat drivers who need a timeout

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Biodiesel, which is essentially diesel fuel made from left over French fry juice and the like, has long been the darling of alt-fuel types. It’s never been seen as a total replacement for the petro-diesel put into delivery trucks and the like, but ‘why just throw something away when we could put it to much better use,’ goes the reasoning.

And more than a few people have glommed onto this idea. People like the city of San Francisco, that runs all of it’s diesel vehicles on bio-D, and the EarthRace power boat, that circumnavigated the globe using only “fuel” that would have been thrown away.

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It looks like Mazda, maker of fine sports cars, practical & stylish sedans and etc., will be getting into the hybrid game, despite earlier denials. At first, at the most recent New York Auto Show, Mazda CEO Takashi Yamanouchi said the company would embrace hybrid technologies after a long time spent deriding the idea. Then, Mazda Executive Vice President Philip Spender put out new details on the company’s future hybrid plans. “We’ve started to talk a lot more about it lately, in part because everybody else is. Mazda is responding partly to new government incentives and emissions rules,” said Spender during the Japanese launch of the new Mazda3.

Unlike other companies, most notably Toyota with their industry standard Prius, Mazda will not make a stand-alone hybrid model. Rather, the Hiroshima-based company will offer gasoline-electric drivetrains as an option on existing models in its line-up. The first Mazda hybrids are expected to see the showroom floors by the “20-teens”.

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In case you didn’t know it, this is a fantastic time to purchase a new vehicle. With programs like “Cash for Guzzlers” kicking in, you can get a super deal for your old beater, and financing deals have never been better. The government will give you a rebate if you buy certain hybrids and will take the car back if you can’t make payments, in some cases.

I never imagined that I would be so inundated by car salesmen once I announced to the world that I was in the market for a new vehicle. It’s been an avalanche of phone calls, e-mails, postcards –literally hundreds of them—all offering unprecedented deals. I feel like a high school football star being recruited by all the top colleges!

With car dealerships closing at an alarming rate, and government bailout money flying around like confetti, this is THE time to purchase a car, because car dealers are hungry for CASH right now.

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The nation’s first all-electric car-sharing program debuted earlier this week in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, with manufacturer Electrovaya hoping urban residents seeking to go green and curious tourists will take the concept for a spin. Electrovaya Inc. is offering its Maya 300 for rent at the Maryland Science Center. The car can go up to 120 miles on one charge of its lithium-ion battery system, and it gets its juice from a regular 110-volt outlet.

This is a great step in the right direction. There are many car-sharing programs out there in this country right now, and they all seem to work best in large metropolitan areas. We have one in San Francisco that is very successful, because it doesn’t make sense for a lot of people to own a car in this city. Think about it—you can save on payments, insurance, fuel and repairs.

But, now Electrovaya is offering the city of Baltimore the best of both worlds—a GREEN car-sharing program. You can’t buy the kind of positive press they will receive for this brilliant marketing move. I had never heard of Electrovaya before today and now I am blogging about them (and you’re reading about them) so you can see what I mean.

To see just how normal the tiny Smart car has become in America, look no further than the news that the company is now offering purchase incentives to buyers of the cute little urban transport critters.

Not that the Smart ForTwo needs much help in the sales department. Word comes from the Penske Automotive Group, U.S. distributors of the Smart set an impressive 24,622 total sales of the diminutive city car in 2008. And yes, that’s the same Penske that basically owns the Borg Warner trophy, as well as recently buying Saturn from GM. Smart dealers are happy, saying they could have sold even more had they been available.

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By Kurt Gensheimer

Blings:

• Luxo interior and ride quality
• Microsoft Sync - the only endearing Microsoft product in existence
• Gutsy and fuel efficient Triton V8

Dings:

• Mundane exterior styling…
• …except for the obnoxiously large faux chrome grille
• Cargo loops in bed smaller than a needle hole

Ruling: Although you might not notice at first glance, Ford’s F-150 really is new and improved.

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Well that was quick. Chrysler, restructuring everything down to the last nut, bolt and pencil during their bankruptcy has announced that the first of their idled plants to be reopened will be the factory that builds the Viper.

It’s an interesting move, and one that is sure to please performance car enthusiasts the world over, and seems to run counter to the rumors that Dodge is looking to sell off the Viper brand the way General Motors sold off Saturn and Hummer. The other part of that rumor was if Chrysler couldn’t unload the Viper marque, it would go the way of Pontiac (and AMC and DeSoto, et al).

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Everybody is getting serious about greening their companies, even folks like Lamborghini. Now I’ve got nothing against Lambo, quite the opposite in fact, but let’s face facts, they’re not the most efficient cars out there. Last time I checked, Lamborghinis where lucky to break into the double-digit MPG figures. Which is fine really, who in their right mind is going to commute in a Lambo?

At any rate, Lamborghini is going to make things greener and more efficient where they can, and in this particular case, they are drastically lowing their factory’s CO₂ output, aiming to get a whopping 35% reduction by 2015.

The Italian automaker is installing 17,000 square meters of solar panels on its factory roof that will generate 1,582 MWh of electricity annually. Lambo is changing things on the inside of the factory too. Indoors they are improving insulation, lighting, and climate control as a way to get the factory-related CO₂ emissions down by 30 percent by 2010, and cut by a total of 35% five years later.

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With Father’s Day rapidly approaching, I’m thinking about my dad, whose 80 years old now but still going strong. When I look back at all of the milestones he took me through, I can’t help but recall the patience he exhibited with me over the years, most notably when he taught me how to drive a car.

Although I consider myself a good driver today at age 50, I had a very rocky start in the world of vehicle operation way back in the summer of 1974, when I turned 16. The school I attended didn’t have a driver’s education behind-the-wheel program, so my father tried to teach me himself, in his old Opel Kadett in the parking lot of the Rose Bowl in Pasadena.

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A new car company with backing from Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins and billionaire investor T. Boone Pickens intends to manufacture fuel-efficient cars in Louisiana, at the site of a closed General Motors auto supplier’s plant. V-Vehicle Company said it will approximately double the size of the facility and hire more than 1,400 workers to produce a “high-quality, environmentally friendly and fuel-efficient car for the U.S. market,” according to a press release issued this morning.

That’s all the information the company is releasing right now, though there’s speculation the car will be powered only by gasoline and that it won’t be a hybrid, full-electric or other alternative-powered vehicle.

“We’re not prepared to talk about the product yet,” VVC spokesman Joe Fisher told Cars.com this afternoon. “But V-Vehicle believes the new car will reconstruct the entire automobile [manufacturing and sales] process from beginning to end to provide extra value to customers.”

Car lease trading — a way for drivers to cut their auto lease payments — is becoming more popular in the midst of the current economic uncertainty. People don’t know what’s happening tomorrow with their jobs, homes or finances, so they’re opting to get into a shorter leases with less commitment, and lease trading is a great way to do it.

Cincinnati-based Swapalease.com expects nationwide growth to be up 30 percent from last year, projecting 100,000 transactions for 2009.

Miami-based Leasetrader.com is projecting 60,000 nationwide lease transfers for 2009, up 24 percent from last year.

John Sternal, vice president of marketing and communications for Leasetrader.com, said they have a waiting list of people interested in picking up short-term leases.

“In this economy, people are really hesitant to sign up for a long-term financial commitment,” he said.

Lease trading allows a lease holder to get out of an auto lease if they can find someone to take over the monthly payments. The new owner is only responsible for the remainder of the lease contract — not a down payment like the original lessee — and can choose to purchase the car at the end of the lease.