Motor Trend fetes ‘Baby Bentley’

The Chrysler 300, the “baby Bentley” that has proven appealing to everyone from rappers to grandmothers and helped the automaker revive its U.S. business, has been named Motor Trend magazine’s Car of the Year.

The 300 beat out 23 other new or significantly revised models, including the revamped Ford Mustang, the Buick LaCrosse and the gas-electric version of the Honda Accord.

Last year’s Car of the Year was the Toyota Prius, the world’s first commercially mass-produced hybrid car. Last month, Motor Trend named Land Rover’s LR3 as its sport utility vehicle of the year.

Economy

Food, energy costs spur inflation rise

Consumer prices in October posted their biggest increase in five months, pinching people’s pocketbooks at the gas pump and at the grocery store.

The latest picture of the nation’s pricing climate showed that inflation is picking up now that the economy has emerged from a slow spell.

The government’s most closely watched inflation gauge, the Consumer Price Index, rose 0.6 percent in October, compared with a 0.2 percent rise in September, the Labor Department said Wednesday. Costlier energy and food were the main culprits behind last month’s acceleration.

Markets

Mutual fund founders to pay $80M each

The two founders of the Pilgrim-Baxter mutual fund family have agreed to pay $80 million each to settle regulators’ charges of improper trading to benefit themselves and friends at the expense of longer-term shareholders, authorities announced Wednesday.

Harold J. Baxter and Gary L. Pilgrim also will be permanently banned from the securities industry, as part of settlements with the Securities and Exchange Commission and the office of New York Atty. Gen. Eliot Spitzer.

Courts

Lockheed seeks data about rival Boeing

Lockheed Martin lawyers want to know if a former top Air Force official, recently sentenced to prison, played a role in space-launch services contract that Lockheed claims was tainted by the misuse of trade secrets by a competitor, the Boeing Co.

Lawyers for Lockheed Martin want to depose a Boeing representative about communications between Boeing and Darleen Druyun between January 1995 and October 2004 as part of Lockheed’s civil lawsuit accusing rival Boeing of racketeering and illegally acquiring trade secrets.

Druyun was a former top acquisitions officer for the Air Force.