Cars

If you're thinking of visiting a Disney park in Anaheim this summer, be warned that the price is about to jump by between $7 and $150 depending on the ticket deal. The annual summer price hike for tickets to Disneyland and the Disney California Adventure Park were announced Friday and take effect Sunday. For example, a ticket for one day at either Disneyland or California Adventure had cost $80 for parkgoers who are 10 or older. The new price, starting Sunday, will be $87, up nearly 9%. The biggest increase will hit people who buy the premium annual pass that includes parking.

A bleary-eyed Chui Hom tripped down her apartment stairs at 8 a.m. sharp and started her car. She didn't get far. The vehicle inched across Riverside Terrace, a narrow one-way lane in Echo Park, and stopped on the other side. Hom is part of Los Angeles' Great Street-Sweeping Do-Si-Do. Twice a week, residents of Koreatown, Pico-Union and other neighborhoods with more apartments than parking spaces race to their cars, hoping to move them before parking enforcement officers arrive and ticket them for blocking street sweepers.

Long Beach Airport (LGB) this week will open a new parking structure, bringing all airport parking on-site and within walking distance of the main terminal building. But it will also shut down its cheapest lot. The new Lot B parking garage, under construction for more than a year near the terminal, holds about 2,000 cars. Airport spokeswoman Kim McMahon said the lot will open at 12:01 a.m. Friday. On the same day, remote parking Lot D at Lakewood Boulevard and Conant Street will be closed, although of course cars already parked there can remain until they exit, McMahon said.

Resolving a key issue in a $890-million transit contract, federal officials announced Wednesday that a Japanese firm's plan to build up to 235 cars for Los Angeles-area light-rail lines complies with requirements that American workers be used for final assembly. In its decision, the Federal Transit Administration rejected assertions by local labor organizations, community activists and two competing companies that Kinkisharyo International's production plan would violate "Buy America" requirements by climate-testing a few rail cars in Japan and not the United States.

The wait for tables is getting longer at Buck's, a popular breakfast spot for the tech elite and a weather vane for the Silicon Valley economy. Here, like everywhere else, Facebook is the talk of the town. "Charles Schwab was in the restaurant the other day, and I asked him to hook me up with some Facebook shares," said Jamis MacNiven, owner of Buck's, in the wealthy suburban enclave of Woodside. "He told me even he can't get Facebook shares. " The new tech boom officially gets underway Friday when Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg rings Nasdaq's opening bell remotely from the company's Menlo Park, Calif., headquarters, launching the largest initial public offering of stock in Silicon Valley history.

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...

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.

You look fat in that. Of course I'll be late. Your baby reminds me of Gollum's uncle. This is what the 2013 Subaru BRZ might say if it could talk. The all-new, rear-wheel-drive sports car starts at $26,265, and boy is it honest - perhaps more so than any other car on the market today, save for its mechanical twin, the Scion FR-S. The two were jointly developed by Subaru and Scion's parent company, Toyota, with both assembled by Subaru in Japan. The question about the BRZ is, can you handle the honesty?

Gasoline prices are keeping up their record-setting ways. California drivers paid an average of $4.358 for a gallon of regular gasoline, up 6.6 cents from a week earlier, the Energy Department said Monday. That's a fresh record high for this time of year and is 48.4 cents above the year-earlier price. Nationally, the average rose 7.2 cents to $3.793, also a record for this week, according to Energy Department statistics. A year earlier, the average U.S. price was 27.3 cents lower.

Last of three parts No car, no work. That's the conclusion Lisa Twombly reached as she fought to hang on to her job as a caretaker for an elderly San Diego couple. Taking the bus and bumming rides from friends wasn't cutting it, and she was repeatedly late for work. Told she'd be fired if it happened again, Twombly put down $4,000 - all her savings - on a 9-year-old Chrysler Sebring with 95,000 miles. The dealership lent her the $2,600 balance at a steep 18% interest rate.

INDIANAPOLIS — The Indianapolis 500 will be run for the 96th time Sunday, but several things will be different about the venerable race this year. All the drivers are using a new car that's untested in 500 miles of race conditions at the 2.5-mile Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The car has enhanced safety features and there are multiple manufacturers providing engines, versus only one engine maker before. Danica Patrick, having moved to NASCAR, isn't here for the first time in eight years.

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%.

A new ranking of auto brands and models placed Ford Motor Co. and Honda Motor Co. at the top. Total Car Score ( www.totalcarscore.com) looked at auto review and ratings sites and measured which brands and vehicles received the most kudos.  The idea was to develop a comprehensive evaluation that takes advantage of expert opinions and ratings of autos, said Karl Brauer, founder and chief executive of Total Car Score.

Tesla Motors Inc. said it will begin delivering its first mass production electric car -– the high-end Model S to customers starting June 22, about a month ahead of the expected schedule. The Palo Alto-based company says it has more than 10,000 orders for the battery-powered car but that not all will be delivered this year.

Here's a big oops for Ferrari, the maker of megabucks sports cars: It made a mistake making the crankshafts for the engines in its California and 458 Italia models and now will have to repair or replace them, depending on what the owners prefer. Ferrari said it would recall the 2011 and 2012 model-year cars because the crankshaft error could cause the engines in the vehicles, which sell for $200,000 or more, to freeze suddenly and possibly cause a crash. The Italian automaker learned of the problem in a uniquely embarrassing way. The first of the cars to have its engine freeze was the one the company lent to critics to review.

A bill that would allow self-driving cars on California's roads has passed the California Senate. The bill, SB1298, sponsored by Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Pacoima), establishes guidelines for "autonomous vehicles" to be tested and operated in California. The bill now goes to the Assembly for consideration next month. Tech giant Google Inc., Caltech and other organizations have been working to develop such vehicles, which use radar, video cameras and lasers to navigate roads and stay safe in traffic without human assistance.

Lamar Odom's voice on the phone frequently was barely above a whisper. The pain clearly registered in words that flowed in stops and starts as he delivered a soliloquy about death and the effect it has had on his psyche. The Lakers forward spoke deliberately and expressed how emotional it has been for him to deal with two recent deaths. Odom attended a funeral in New York on July 13 for his 24-year-old cousin, who Odom said was murdered. The next day, Odom was a passenger in an SUV in Queens when it collided with a motorcycle.

Hollywood High School keeps its doors open 12 months a year to ease overcrowding. The year-round schedule allows the campus to run hundreds more students through its cramped classrooms. It also chips away at their education. Teachers skip pages of material, assign less homework and give fewer tests because their school year has been slashed by 17 days. Hundreds of pupils take the Stanford 9 exam shortly after returning from an eight-week vacation.

Excavating in a coal mine in Colombia, paleontologists have discovered the fossil of the world's largest turtle, a 60-million-year-old specimen nearly 8 feet long -- the size of a Smart car. Thriving in a lake about 5 million years after the demise of the dinosaurs, the turtle was undoubtedly the largest predator in its environment, researchers say.

U.S. auto-safety regulators are joining inquiries into a Texas garage fire that destroyed a Fisker Automotive Inc. Karma, a $103,000 plug-in electric vehicle. The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration sent investigators to help investigate the cause of the fire at a home in Sugar Land, Texas, that Fisker learned of May 3, Claude Harris, the agency's director of vehicle safety compliance, said Friday. "We are conducting an ongoing field inquiry for an EV incident in Texas," Harris said at a Transportation Department electric-vehicle safety forum in Washington.