A 46-year-old blind auto mechanic from Cottage Grove, Oregon shocked everyone when he decided to put "disabilities aside" and hired a 17-year-old deaf student as his new employee. Larry Woody, who lost his eyes in a car accident five years ago on Interstate 5, still works on various models of cars, has an interest in racing and recently bought his own shop, D and D Foreign Automotive, in Cottage Grove.

The owner of a coffee stand in the parking lot of an auto repair shop in Washington is determined to find the thief who recently robbed his store at gunpoint. Troy Malchow is offering one year of free coffee to anyone who can help the police catch the gunman. According to Malchow, his store Perfetto Espresso was robbed last Wednesday, when a man "walking down the sidewalk. . . walks right in and pulls a gun out and said 'stay calm and give me the money,'" he told Komotv. com.

Robert "Jack" Parker, a 73-year-old car dealership owner from Texas, was sentenced to 10 years in prison after jurors found him guilty of attacking one of his customers with a machete. Parker was convicted Wednesday of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. According to police, Gerald Davis, 53, had purchased a car from Time Auto Sales and went back to the dealership to pick up his license plates. But the two men somehow got engaged in scuffle and eventually Parker produced the machete.

According to an AP-AOL Auto poll, many US drivers have close connection to the car. They give their vehicles nicknames, talk to them and most of all love to drive them. Three in 10 of those polled think of their car as gender-specific. But female drivers were more likely to name their vehicles and think of them as female. Twenty-three percent of drivers think their cars are female while only seven percent thought of their cars as male.

When two shoplifters dashed out of an auto parts store the store manager ran after them and jumped onto the getaway car in an effort to stop the thieves. It actually wasn't intentional. The Milwaukee Checker Auto Parts store manager, Darrin Malsack, only intended to get the thieves' license plate number. The men had stolen a portable DVD system.