'38 Talbot-Lago, '29 Duesenberg crowned Best in Show at Meadow Brook concours

French curves and a ghost from the United States' gilded luxury-making past won top honors on Sunday at the 31st Concours d'Elegance of America at Meadow Brook on a sunny afternoon north of Detroit. A 1938 Talbot-Lago 150-C teardrop coupe won Best in Show for European cars, and a 1929 Duesenberg Model J-129 Le Baron Dual Cowl Phaeton won Best in Show for Americans at the annual event, which attracts some of the most luxurious and pristine cars from around the country. The Talbot-Lago shimmered with silver paint and chrome, and already counts two smaller awards at the Pebble Beach concours to its name.

New Sound of Bentley: Is this the new Bentley V8?

The New Sound of Bentley - the new V8 or GT2? Bentley has sent us a couple of videos this afternoon teasing the ‘New Sound of Bentley’. Is this the new V8 engine for the Continental GT?

'American Nitro' is back!

"Seventies drag-race mayhem is back!" bills "American Nitro," a schlocky drive-in exploitation film whose only quote of praise, from a dog-eared period issue of "Car Craft," reads, simply, "SPECTACULAR CRASHES!" Director Bill Kimberlin says that he made "American Nitro" in 1979 as a response to Tom Wolfe's influential 1965 essay, "The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby." "I was just getting out of high school in a small town in Northern California when Wolfe's book came out," he said. "Nitro came about as my response to the car culture I was exposed to in the small valley town of Boonville, Calif. Instead of 'American Graffiti,' I made 'American Nitro.'" A fitting comparison, in fact, considering Kimberlin later worked for George Lucas at ILM, starting with" Return of the Jedi." Now the movie is being released on DVD for the first time -- beware of bootlegs, warns the website -- and digitally remastered, while retaining the explosive charm and goofy narration of the 1979 original.