Last month I got a lot of email after pondering what it might take to get me to buy an American car. I suggested that Detroit needed to come up with some sort of marketing campaign to convince me it's the cool, hip, right thing to do.

I spent part of Wednesday afternoon tooling around GM's tech center in a "mule" version of the Volt. When I hit the gas, the acceleration was instant. The Volt will deliver the same performance you would get from a car with 250 horse power

Following are the day’s biggest winners and losers. Find out why shares of General Motors and Family Dollar Stores popped while Freeport-McMoRan and JPMorgan Chase dropped.