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1953 Ferrari 340/375 MM Pinin Farina Berlinetta ‘Competizione’ makes €9,856,000

It’s the annual  Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este festival of supercars and classic cars this weekend, and poart of that is the RM Auctions sale at Vella Erba, on the banks of Lake Como, with a 1953 Ferrari 340/375 MM Pinin Farina Berlinetta ‘Competizione’ smashing the world auction record by fetching €9,865,000. The 375 MM is one of three works cars entered in the 1953 24 Hours of Le Mans and has a good history including 24 Hour of Spa, the Carrera Panamericana, and winning the 12 Hours of Pescara, has been driven by World Champions Hawthorn, Ascari, and Farina and won numerous awards at many events including Pebble Beach, Goodwood Revival and the Louis Vuitton Classic. But it wasn’t just the 375 MM that sold at a strong price, with other notable lots fetching good prices, such as a 1965 Ferrari 275 GTB, for €1,120,000,  a 1967 Lamborghini Miura P400 at €426,600, a 1962 Mercedes-Benz 300SL Roadster for €1,114,400 and a 1962 Ferrari 400 Superamerica SWB Coupé Aerodinamico for €2,184,000.

Pagani Zonda R at the Nurburgring: on video

The phrase 'broken record' at the Nurburgring has become ever so slightly over-used. Every other week, another manufacturer steps forward with claims of shaving time off the fabled record.  Pagani are guilty of this as much as the next supercar brand. Yet for some strange reason, you can almost forgive them when you watch the documentary video footage below of Horacio Pagani talking you through the record-breaking, £1.3m, track-special Zonda R.

No sign of global auto meltdown at Tokyo Auto Salon

With more than 600 cars on display and a record number of exhibitors, nothing at the 2009 Tokyo Auto Salon tuner show hinted at the global economic downturn. As always, there was a great mix of styles, from hard-core, 1,000-hp, supertuned machinery to weird customized scooter tricycles. Auto manufacturers tried hard to capture the minds--if not the wallets--of the younger-than-30 crowd with customized versions of production cars, while tuners were busy persuading power junkies to choose them for their next engine modification.