Automakers, and dealers are counting on this week adding a burst of year-end fireworks to auto sales.

Dealers are optimistic and Edmunds.com sees 1.13 million cars and light trucks moving off of dealership lots this month. If so, it will be the highest monthly total of the year and a 10.2% jump from the month last year.

Toyota, which has seen sales slide this year, is dangling 0% financing $750 off the price of a Camry sedan. And most manufacturers are offering rebates of $500 to $2,000. Read the whole story...

Coffee brewing systems maker Keurig, owned by Green Mountain Roasters, did something different before Christmas. The company launched a traditional direct mail campaign to get consumers to try their brewing system.

The direct mail effort involved a drop of 125,000 pieces to get consumers to try to machines either as gifts or for themselves. The effort comprises two different packages, both via King Fish Media. One was a drop of 50,000 copies of a 16-page catalog "Share the Love" mailed to high-volume consumer customers. And 50,000 were sent to customers who hadn't made a purchase within the past year.

Separately, 25,000 prospects who had never made a purchase received a 10-panel accordion-style mailer. Read the whole story...

Va bene! Jeep, the quintessential American vehicle, is about to become Italian. Fiat SpA is majority owner of the automaker, so not too much of a surprise there.

Fiat SpA snagged approvals from unions representing workers in Italy for a $1.3 billion plan for new Jeeps at Fiat's Mirafiori plant. Fiat owns 20% of Chrysler.

Also, the company is making a version of its Fiat 500 car in Mexico and will make a Maserati SUV at one of Chrysler's plants in Detroit. The new Maserati will use the Jeep Grand Cherokee platform. Read the whole story...

Facebook is now driving more Web video traffic than any other Internet property other than Google. Most of the viewing is on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. But people watch longer videos on the weekends, with the lengthiest Web-video sessions happening via videogame consoles rather than PCs or mobile devices.

The data come from the latest Online Video and the Media Industry Quarterly Research Report jointly issued by the online video technology firm Brightcove and the analytics company TubeMogul. The companies said they pulled video-usage data from close to 2,000 news and entertainment sites during the third quarter of this year. Read the whole story...

Think of how much gasoline you waste just idling at a stop light or sitting on the largest parking lot on Earth, I-95. Technology that automatically turns off a vehicle's engine and restarts it when the accelerator is depressed is one way to save gas when idling.

Ford will have that feature called Start/Stop technology in a wide range of its vehicles. Ford says it will improve mileage by 10%. Twenty percent of the automaker's product mix will have Start/Stop by 2014, reports The Detroit Bureau, quoting J Mays, global design director. Read the whole story...

Read the whole story...