Vehicles

A week after the LAPD announced a moratorium on impounding cars of unlicensed drivers because of legal questions, the Los Angeles city attorney's office has determined that the practice is legal in most cases. The Los Angeles Police Department last month told officers to no longer impound vehicles on traffic stops in which the only offense was driving without a license. Drivers will continue to be cited for that offense.

General Motors Corp. wants its dealers to stop selling competitors' vehicles, the company said Monday in an outline of a strategy to hone brand images and reduce the number of GM dealers. In a news release and a letter to dealers, the company's top North American marketing executive said GM cars and trucks "are not commodities and should not be offered to the public from facilities that also offer competing brands."

On the jam-packed elevated highways of China's commercial capital, the big sedans that once dominated the local car market are sharing lanes with a growing number of compact upstarts. Boxy Volkswagen Santana sedans and sleek black Buick Regals made by joint ventures between foreign automakers and Chinese companies still far outnumber the economy models on local roads, but that's fast changing.

One list has four sports cars and six trucks. The other list has nine small vehicles and one sedan. You don't need to be a "Jeopardy!" contestant to figure out which list is for men and which list is for women. Edmunds.com found this out when it compiled top-10 lists of the vehicles in the Los Angeles area with the highest percentages of male and female ownership. Using new-vehicle registrations for 2012, the website was able to determine which cars and trucks were most likely to be owned by men and women.

The cost of doing business for commercial vehicle operators and owners who flout parking laws may be about to increase. The Los Angeles City Council voted Friday to crack down on commercial vehicles that stop or park, attended or unattended, on a bridge, and those that park on any public street for more than three hours. Violators will receive tickets and be subject to tow.

Chevrolet giveth and Chevrolet taketh away. Lifeguards from Long Beach to Imperial Beach are scrambling to acquire pickups and sport utility vehicles for beach patrol because Chevy has ended its public relations-steeped program of loaning vehicles for high-profile strand duty. The automaker announced its decision in December, and eight of the 10 affected cities will lose their vehicles May 10, just before summer season starts.

Hotly debated legislation allowing the state government to seize the cars of some unlicensed drivers won approval by a key Senate committee Tuesday night, despite heated protests. Apparently moved by dramatic arguments that the bill could save lives by removing dangerous drivers from the road, the state Senate Judiciary Committee passed the measure by a 7-4 vote. It would apply to those arrested for driving without a valid license after a previous conviction for such an offense.

Butting heads with a corporate community it often is aligned with, the National Rifle Assn. on Monday called for a boycott of companies that did not allow workers to keep firearms in the cars they park at work. The boycott will focus most immediately, NRA officials said, on ConocoPhillips. The Houston-based oil and energy giant has sued to block an Oklahoma law that gives residents the right to keep firearms in cars outside their workplaces.

In Landshut, Germany, engineers painstakingly dismantle BMWs that have come to the end of the road. Like forensic surgeons performing an autopsy, they drain the tired hulks of fluids, strip off the metallic skins and remove engines and other vital components. Each part is carefully labeled and set aside--metals in one pile, plastics in another, rubber and glass into others. All that is left is a steel skeleton.

Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton was gearing up Friday to lift the Police Department's self-imposed moratorium on impounding cars of unlicensed drivers -- a contentious issue for advocates on both sides of the illegal immigration debate. Bratton said he would recommend that the Police Commission reverse a 2-week-old decision limiting the ability of officers to impound vehicles for 30 days, as state law allows.