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What would a superhero movie be without the fancy cars? Well, it would still be a superhero movie, we suppose, but we prefer the kind that has some flashy wheels. Like the upcoming Marvel flick The Avengers.

As you may have heard, Acura signed a multi-picture deal with Marvel to have its cars featured in a series of superhero movies, and indeed several already have. But for The Avengers, Acura had to work up something special enough to replace Tony Stark's Audi R8. Since the old NSX was long out of production when they began shooting and the new one wasn't ready yet, the Japanese automaker and the film studio put together something of a hybrid.

Not a hybrid as we tend to use the term in automotive spheres, but an amalgamation of the old NSX and the new one. They took a 1991 NSX and gave it a new roadster body to mimic the concept car that's been making the rounds of the auto show circuit.

Our compatriots over at Inside Line got a behind-the-scenes look at the roadster, along with the kitted-out MDX crossover and a TL with a similar treatment. Scroll down to watch the video clips they put together, and the corresponding article here.

We're not so sure how scientific its poll was, but an online dating service that calls itself the U.K.'s largest for married people says that men who cheat on their wives are twice as likely to drive a BMW than any other brand of car.

According to NineMSN.com, Illicit Encounters points to the "intrinsic link between success and cheating" to explain the connection between Bimmers and adultery. Some 19 percent of the dating website's members drive a BMW, including 11 percent of the women who responded to the survey, according to the report. Coming in second on the survey was Audi, with Mercedes-Benz a close third. While BMW may not be outwardly proud of this "victory," we're sure at least someone in Munich is glad to have bested its German rivals.

Speaking of which, scroll down to watch a classic Mercedes commercial about a "happily married" couple.

Ward's AutoWorld is well known for its annual "10 Best Engines" list, but the trade publication has been compiling a second list for interiors for a few years now. Formerly known as the "Interior of the Year" competition, Ward's rebranded the list last year, naming the coolest cockpits under the "10 Best Interiors" moniker.

This year's winners are a relatively diverse lot, with hatchbacks, sedans and crossovers all making the list. While Ward's lists them in alphabetical order rather than crowning a single winner, we're choosing to present them with the lowest as-tested MSRP first:

• Hyundai Accent ($15,925)
• Chevrolet Sonic ($18,745)
• Dodge Dart ($21,485)
• Volkswagen Beetle ($25,195)
• Mazda CX-5 ($30,415)
• Hyundai Azera ($36,875)
• Chrysler 300 Luxury ($44,855)
• Range Rover Evoque ($49,745)
• Infiniti JX35 ($54,800)
• Audi A7 ($67,430)

The first thing we noticed then is that while fully half the models carrying base sticker prices under $25,000, Ward's was clearly not testing the base models of any of these vehicles. The Chevy Sonic, for instance, starts nearly $5,000 below the price of the car Ward's drove. Even so, that half of the cars on the list could be legitimately called "affordable" is impressive.

Ward's says 40 vehicles qualified for the competition by having "new or significantly improved interiors," and while 13 of those were luxury vehicles, they only made up half of the winners. Ward's says it judged the interiors based on design, fit-and-finish, comfort, ergonomics, safety, material selection, overall value, aesthetics, and human-machine interface.

Check out all the award winners in our high-res image gallery above.

It turns out Jay Leno shops for classic cars just like the rest of us do: by wasting untold hours drooling over occasionally perusing BringaTrailer.com. The comedian and host of The Tonight Show recently took a shine to a memorable 1963 Ford Falcon Sprint shown on the site, and it wasn't long before a few phone calls were made. Now the previous owner can say he sold a car to one of the world's most well-known collectors, and Leno will have a very-cool Falcon in his Big Dog Garage.

So, what made this particular coupe worthy of such admiration? The '63 had undergone significant revision at the hands of the previous owner and builder, including a substantial weight reduction, suspension tweaks with input from the gurus at Koni, along with a fully blueprinted 302 V8. With an aluminum intake and heads as well as a lightweight T5 transmission, the seller claims to have plucked around 200 pounds from the vehicle's nose.

The idea was to build the car in the image of the Holman Moody Falcons that once competed in the legendary Monte Carlo Rally. Head over to BaT for both the initial sale listing story and the tale of Leno's buying.

The 2013 Porsche Cayenne Diesel finally rolled out for North American buyers at the New York Auto Show earlier this month, and the oil-burning V6 that we'll be able to purchase this September musters 240 horsepower and 406 pound-feet of torque shifted through an eight-speed automatic. The more important numbers are 28 miles per gallon, a 740-mile range, and a 7,716-pound tow rating when you need to realign the Earth's crust.

Our friends across the water have been enjoying this model for three years already, and while we're getting used to our first taste of torquey Porsches, the Europeans appear set to receive a second helping: a new report in Car and Driver asserts that Porsche will add a V8 diesel to Euro markets "in the near future." Naturally, don't even think about it coming here.

C/D posits two options for which diesel it will get called up: the 4.2-liter diesel V8 used in the Audi A8 or possibly a brand-new diesel that Porsche could share with Bentley.

So is it time to start the Suzuki dead pool? Automotive News seems to think so. While the newspaper doesn't go as far as suggesting that Suzuki is not long for the American market, it has compiled a depressingly long list of signs that the company is on its last legs here.

Among the many signs that Suzuki is hurting, the most damning might be what's happening with its dealer body. The report says the brand dropped 32 stores last year, roughly 12 percent, and that it is down to 246 total dealerships in the States. But of those, 150 sell five or fewer cars per month. That would explain why Suzuki only sold 26,618 cars last year, according to AN.

Other signs of distress include sluggish sales so far this year, not exhibiting at the most recent Detroit and Los Angeles auto shows, cutting off their deal for J.D. Power customer satisfaction data, and a lack of marketing leadership or initiative, according to the report.

While Suzuki's product lineup is among the smallest and oldest in the industry, that seems to be the least of the brand's troubles. Heck, even we kind of like the Kizashi.

We see tribute vehicles come and go. Most of the lot are slaves to every last detail of the original, offering little more than a few engine upgrades to the mix. Then there are beasts like the one above. Built as an homage to Parnelli Jones' 1971 "Big Oly" Ford Bronco Baja 1,000 bruiser, this machine uses a modern trophy truck chassis wrapped in larger-than life fiberglass first-generation Bronco body. With 723 horsepower on tap, the truck is fully capable of bashing the desert into submission. Owner Marshall Mardruga originally built the machine to tackle the Baja 1,000, but decided to turn it into a show truck instead.

Every visible component was then plated in brass or nickel and protected with a clear powder coat in preparation for SEMA 2011. If you like what you see, this machine can be yours for a heady sum. Available in San Diego, California via eBay Motors, the street-legal tribute commands a $535,000 Buy It Now price. You can see the auction here or scroll below to check out a few videos.

Well... look who lives! Our spy photographers have managed to snag a few photos of what may very well be the next interpretation of the Chevrolet Impala SS. Long thought to be a casualty of the General Motors bailout, the biggest member Club SS was reportedly shelved a few years back. The Impala line hasn't offered an SS performance variant since 2009, and the more aggressive grille, front fascia and tweaked head- and taillight arrays on this prototype hint at something more sinister than any topped-out LTZ model could offer. Our spy shooter's supplier sources indicate GM is, in fact, still working on an Impala SS, and they suggest the sedan may bow with a new LF3 twin-turbo 3.0-liter V6 under the hood.

If true, that means the brawny Impala could scoot down the road with a heady 380 horsepower. As far as we know, no vehicle since the limited production 350-hp Ford Focus RS500 has tried to push anywhere near that many ponies to the front wheels, which begs the question: will the Impala offer all-wheel drive despite recent reports to the contrary?

Doing so would seem to position the Impala SS quite well against the freshly updated Taurus SHO. Either way, we're excited to give this big boy a go.

For a car that still hasn't donned its new body yet, not even under copious camouflage, there's been chatter about the 2014 Lexus IS for an awful long time. We saw the first mule 18 months ago, and it was about that time that intel predicted Lexus' next-generation small sport sedan would run on a four-door version of the Scion FT-86 chassis and be followed by a coupe.

The snappers at CarPix caught a modern mule out on test, the only change so far from 2010 being the panels obscuring the front intakes and a roll of packing tape applied to some panel gaps. The car we eventually see will continue the sportification of the Lexus brand in both appearance and capability. As well, the IS-F begat by this IS, having been planned for and developed from the beginning, should really show us what an M3-fighting Lexus can do.

Matt Ramsey from The Wall Street Journal claims that the next-generation Ford Mustang will be ditching its '60s-inspired retro styling. Citing people familiar with Ford's plans who have seen the new Mustang, Ramsey claims the new model will look more like the 2013 Fusion and be a dead ringer for the Evos concept car that debuted at the Frankfurt Motor Show last fall. The reason for abandoning the retro-inspired styling, says Ramsey, is Ford's desire to appeal to Generation Y consumers – people born between 1980 and 1999.

It may very well be the case that the next Mustang, which Ramsey says will be a 2014 model (we suspect it will be labeled a 2015), will look a lot like the Evos concept, but we don't buy some of the author's reasoning for why the Stang's retro look might be going away. He cites declining sales of certain retro-styled vehicles like the Volkswagen Beetle and Mustang itself, but having just experienced an economic recession, many models saw their sales decline during the past two years compared to prior peaks, not just ones with retro styling. In particular, he cites Volkswagen selling just 6,468 units of the New Beetle last year compared with over 81,000 in 2000, but last year was that generation's final year of sales. It has been replaced with the all-new-but-equally-retro 2012 Beetle, sales of which are up 2,722 percent so far in 2012.

And as for the Mustang, after enjoying a competition-free pony car market from 2002-2010, it's now sharing that segment's sales with worthy competition from both Chevrolet and Dodge. Its sales are certainly below their peaks from last decade, but again, a recession and new competition where there was none before will do that.

So while we have no reason to argue against Ramsey's claim about the next Mustang moving away from its retro roots, we're not sure we buy his evidence for the reason behind it.

We've seen the Nissan DeltaWing running shakedown laps, but now the bonanza of teaser vids will truly begin as the DeltaWing prepares in earnest for the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Since it has shown it can actually handle a track at speed, the latest step in the process is to verify how it handles the wind.

Nissan Europe will be producing a video roughly every two weeks tracking the DeltaWing's evolution, and after the race Audi's sequel to Truth in 24 will be joined by a documentary on Nissan's isosceles racer. Scroll down for Nissan's take in words and video.

You had to figure that this might happen when BMW decided to reinvent the gearshift lever for the 2002 7 Series. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has been investigating the 2002-2008 7 Series since last fall, and has now "upgraded the probe to an engineering analysis," according to an Associated Press report in The Detroit News. The Feds have found 16 crashes and five injuries related to transmission issues, and received 50 complaints about the issue, according to the report.

NHTSA's Monthly Defect Investigations Report calls the problem "Vehicle Rollaway Allegations," which are likely related to the design of the gear selector in the E65/E66. This generation of the 7 Series moved the traditional gearshift lever from the floor console to the steering column to make more room in the center console. In doing so, BMW abandoned the traditional P-R-N-D layout and adopted an electronic push-button selector for "Park." The AP says at least some of the problems may be related to owners not realizing their cars were in neutral instead of park.

Our own experience has shown that even in more recent BMW's with floor-console-mounted shifters, it can be difficult to tell whether the vehicle is in Park or not, and we find the BMW gear selector as a whole to be non-intuitive – we're frankly surprised that NHTSA has not received more than 50 complaints concerning the issue.

Remember JAC? It's the Chinese company so dedicated to cloning the Ford F-150 that it changed its logo to a blue oval in the grille. JAC is back with a new car for this month's Beijing Auto Show, this time showing off less consistent plagiarism and more pastiche with the Heyue SC coupe.

With a snout lifted from the Lotus Esprit or the other four Lotus concepts, mirrors that seem to be lifted from a Lamborghini Gallardo and a Factory Five rear end with Ferrari Enzo taillights, the Heyue SC isn't a bad looking car for being an agglomeration of reanimated parts. Inside is a dash cluster that looks cribbed from the Audi R8 parts bin along with an Opel steering wheel.

Power comes from a 2.4-liter four-cylinder with 162 horsepower and 160 pound-feet of torque, which should make for reasonable gumption unless the Heyue is made of lead. The price is 200,000 yuan ($31,807 U.S.), which places it in between its competitors in specs and price, the better looking, more powerful and less expensive Brilliance BS3, and the miniature Mercedes-Benz CLK clone known as the BYD S8. Head over to China Car News to get a few more looks at it.

The Mercedes-Benz A25 AMG has disrobed almost completely compared to the last time we saw it. It makes minimal changes to the A-Class form, just a fiercer set of wheels and, under the last remaining camo, a brace of larger air intakes in front and a restyled diffuser in back. We'd also expect those oval pipe finishers to be swapped for trademark AMG quad pipes come production time.

The engine is what will make the real difference, with its 2.0-liter four-cylinder rumored to be rated as high as 350 horsepower and sending that glory to all four wheels through a dual-clutch gearbox. Those specs mean the A25 AMG is a shoo-in for heaps of comparos with the all-wheel drive, 340-horsepower Audi RS3, the driving prowess of the 256-horsepower Volkswagen Golf R and the rumored 320-horsepower BMW 135i hatch. Check it out in our gallery of high-res spy photos.