Buyers

BMW has been striving to reconcile its dueling images for years. Best known for its luxurious, sport-oriented cars, the German manufacturer's motorcycles are only beginning to shed their reputation as wheels for safety-conscious old men, thanks to exciting new bikes like the S 1000 RR and K 1600 LT. At this weekend's International Motorcycle Shows event in Long Beach, BMW is likely to confuse its image even further when its first scooters make...

Motel 6 and Studio 6, the no-frills budget hotel chains that once offered rooms for $6 a night, are being sold by French parent Accor for $1.9 billion. The new owner, an affiliate of private equity firm Blackstone Group, already owns Hilton Worldwide. Blackstone said it plans to "accelerate the expansion of the franchise base" for Motel 6 and Studio 6. Accor will use proceeds from the sale to slash its debt and grow its luxury Sofitel and Novotel hotels in Asia, Latin America and Europe.

The biggest home in Los Angeles County is ready for a new nickname: The 56,500-square-foot Manor, dubbed Candyland after owner Candy Spelling, has been sold to another wealthy socialite, British heiress Petra Ecclestone, in an all-cash deal for $85 million. As steep as that price is, it's not a record or even close to what Spelling was asking. The priciest Southland home transaction was the 2000 sale of an 8-acre estate in Bel-Air to financial executive Gary Winnick in a deal that included the trade of other land, for a total value of about $94 million.

Fuel economy is the top feature buyers consider when shopping for a new car, according to a recent survey by Consumer Reports. The magazine, an influential force on car buying choices, said that 37% of the respondents in an April telephone survey listed fuel economy as their top consideration when shopping for a new car. Quality was a distant second at 17% followed by safety at 16%, value at 14% and performance at just 6%.

First of three parts Tiffany Lee wanted a car. She was weary of the two-hour bus ride to her job at a UCLA Health System clinic. She hated having to ask friends to drive her 7-year-old son to his asthma treatments. But as a single mother with three children, bad credit and a $27,000-a-year salary, she couldn't find a bank or dealership willing to give her a loan. Then a friend steered her to Repossess Auto Sales in Hawthorne. Another buyer might have balked at the deal she was offered.

Auto leasing deals abound these days, with offers that often seem too good to be true. How about a well-equipped Honda Accord for $250 a month with no down payment or any other drive-off fees? Or better yet, $199 a month for a Chevrolet Malibu? So, what's the catch? There isn't any if you know what you're getting into. There are always details. You need top-tier credit to qualify. You pay a penalty if you turn that Honda in with more than 36,000 miles. And the payment is not $250 a month because of that little matter of tax. It is more like $275, depending on where you live.

The bidding was fast. Inside a packed showroom at Bonhams & Butterfields, auctioneer Carolyn Mani was moving quickly through lots of antique furniture, clocks and artwork. Images of the items flashed on overhead screens as Mani solicited bids, selling most items in less than a minute and often under their preauction estimates. A Japanese elm chest sold for $397. Six Louis XV chairs barely fetched $300 apiece, and a George III mahogany side table -- appraised at $500 to $700 -- hammered at $305.

Andrea Angott has a doctorate in psychology and is a postdoctoral associate in the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University. She generally spends her days studying how consumers make decisions about their healthcare. But last year she detoured into the curious world of home staging. Staging, for those of you who have never flicked on the HGTV cable channel, is the process of decluttering, rearranging and otherwise dressing up your home to make it appeal to a broad array of potential buyers.

A small wooden cabinet went up for auction on EBay. Inside were two locks of hair, one granite slab, one dried rosebud, one goblet, two wheat pennies, one candlestick and, allegedly, one "dibbuk," a kind of spirit popular in Yiddish folklore. The seller, a Missouri college student named Iosif Nietzke, described the container as a "haunted Jewish wine cabinet box" that had plagued several owners with rotten luck and a spate of bizarre paranormal stunts.

A diamond-encrusted lining is emerging in Southern California's cloudy real estate market. At least a half-dozen Westside mega-estates have sold for more than $20 million so far this year — creating a deafening buzz in local realty circles. Only a few home sales in other Southland counties have surpassed the $20-million mark. On the horizon is the close of Candy Spelling's larger-than-White-House-sized "Manor," which has reigned supreme from its $150-million listing price perch in Holmby Hills for more than two years and is expected to eclipse last year's record $50-million Bel-Air sale by a wide margin.

Their internationally recognized names sell music and movie tickets. They promote perfumes and presidents. But when it comes to selling their own houses, celebrities often find that their cachet doesn't pull in the cash. Actors Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell haven't found a buyer for their Malibu beach house, which comes with a raft of celeb-friendly amenities including a covered outdoor living room, a spa-like bath retreat and a meditation room. So the couple have nipped $3.5 million from last year's price, listing the Balinese-influenced oceanfront spread at $11.2 million.

High price,poor product If you can't buy 'em, beat 'em. That could be the motto for Steven Cohen , the hedge-fund billionaire and runner-up in the bidding for the Dodgers. The San Diego Padres are up for sale, and Cohen is thought to be one of at least five potential buyers cleared by Major League Baseball to review the team's confidential financial data. Cohen already owns a small stake in his hometown New York Mets, but the majority owners of the Mets appear to have staved off the legal and financial distress that might have enabled Cohen to buy them out completely.

Among all the special places inside his sprawling 10,700-square-foot mountaintop home, Daniel Coletti savors the vibe inside the living room most. It's a luxury dreamscape distinguished by mammoth walls of glass and Idaho-hewn stone. At night, he gazes out past the blue waters of an indoor-outdoor infinity pool and onto a vast citywide vista capped by the shimmering lights of the Strip. "It's like looking at a fire," his wife, Natalie, said. "You can't turn your eyes from it. " The property has another unique feature: Offered at $13.9 million, it's the most expensive residential listing in Las Vegas.

Video game sales took a nose dive in April, plunging a stomach-churning 42% compared with a year earlier as companies cranked out fewer releases than in April 2011. Retailers rang up only $292.1 million in game sales last month, down from $503.2 million a year earlier, according to NPD Group, a market research firm. With fewer new games to drive people into stores, sales of game consoles also took a hit, falling 32% to $189.7 million. "Simply stated, there were notably fewer" new game releases, said NPD analyst Anita Frazier.

MOSCOW - A new Russian passenger plane with 50 people aboard went missing Wednesday during a demonstration flight over Indonesia, officials said. The Sukhoi Superjet 100, on a South Asian promotional tour, disappeared from radar screens 20 minutes into its second flight from Jakarta. The crew last spoke to ground control while over Mt. Halimun Salak National Park in West Java province, the Rossiya 24 television network reported. "Before communication was lost with the plane, there was no information about the malfunction of the systems," said Vladimir Prisyazhnyuk, president of Moscow-based Sukhoi Civil Aircraft Co. "The plane has conducted about 500 flights with the overall flight time over 800 hours [and]

WASHINGTON — It may be the best-kept secret in residential real estate: For a couple of hundred dollars, a potential buyer bidding on an existing house can ask for a formal energy audit along with the standard inspection clause. That audit, in turn, can save the buyer thousands of dollars in future operating costs and pinpoint the specific features of the house that need correction to improve efficiency. It might also be a tipoff to a sobering reality: This house is an energy guzzler.

The one thing you can be sure of when you walk out of a BMW news conference is that you'll have plenty of information. Your head aches from it. Your ears ring with it. Your jaws are sore from swallowing it whole like a snake. I fairly staggered out of the press briefing at a hotel here laden with facts about the company's latest personal executive sedan, the 2011 BMW 5-series. This numerical disquisition will soon be yours, so brace yourself. But here's a number that absolutely fascinated me. According to BMW execs, the 5-series -- the company's second-best-selling model after the multifarious 3-series -- represents 50% of the company's total profit.

The developer of a proposed downtown football stadium is counting on a dramatic change in the behavior of L.A. sports fans, releasing a report Thursday that bets 1 in 4 ticket buyers would come to the 72,000-seat venue without a car on weekdays. With more than 19,000 vehicles expected to flood downtown for games at Farmers Field, Anschutz Entertainment Group's strategy for traffic hinges, in part, on convincing ticket buyers to travel via the Metro Blue Line, the upcoming Expo Line and other public transit routes.

Film producer and clothing entrepreneur Brad Zions has sold his house in the Hollywood Hills West area for $7.95 million. Among notables in the home's ownership history is actor Richard Gere , according to the Movieland Directory. The gated contemporary features views of the Los Angeles basin, a two-story entry, a bar, three en suite bedrooms, three additional bathrooms and a home theater. Outside the 4,534-square-foot home is a swimming pool, spa, deck, outdoor living room and kitchen.

Average prices at U.S. gasoline pumps have been running ahead of the record pace set last year, but rising fuel economy standards have given American motorists many more choices for mitigating pain at the pump, the Natural Resources Defense Council said. The NRDC's new report on the subject is called "Relieving Pain at the Pump: Thanks to Stronger Standards, Consumers Have More Fuel-Efficient Choices. " In it, the , the NRDC pointed out, for example, that the number of subcompacts offering 30 miles per gallon or better fuel economy had tripled from just five in the 2009 model year to 15 in model year 2012.