Auto News 5

For 2010, the Mercedes-Benz S-class gains its first-ever hybrid powertrain, a clear indication that its maker is shifting from a strict diesel approach to efficiency and finally acknowledging the worth of hybrids as an essential step on the path to electric propulsion. What's more, the Mercedes S400 Hybrid is the world's first production hybrid automobile using lithium-ion batteries (the Tesla Roadster is powered solely by Li-ion batteries). Hybrid propulsion systems aren't anything new, of course, but they're still rare in the luxury class, where the Lexus LS600hL has been standing alone for the past two years.

Sport sedans operate in a gray area where practicality gives way to emotion. A thoroughly rational shopping list of the world's best examples would include the Audi S6, the BMW M5, the Cadillac CTS-V, the Lexus IS-F, and the Mercedes-Benz E63 AMG. But pragmatism, logic, and good sense are rarely the deciding factors when considering an irrational purchase like a $100K-plus, 150-mph-plus automobile. Instead, right-brain values come to the forefront - style, rarity, sophistication, glamour, equipment, image, and, yes, sex appeal. The aforementioned sedans are undeniably speedy and dynamically impressive - but at the end of the day, the M5 isn't much more than a 528i on steroids, the S6 is an A6 that has undergone a complicated heart transplant via Sant'Agata Bolognese, the CTS-V and the IS-F both have relatively humble genetic backgrounds, and the E63 AMG started life on the same assembly line as 75 percent of the German taxi population.

The Monterey Historic Automobile Races are the premier vintage car races in the United States. They draw more than 450 rare and exotic entries cumulatively valued at more than the gross domestic product of some third world nations. Yet the biggest attraction last summer wasn't a race car; it was a race car transporter that less than two years earlier had looked like the rusted-out, shot-up, long-forgotten relic of a third-world civil war.

When a garage-find Bugatti Type 57S Atalante coupe sold at Bonham's Paris auction recently for $4.4 million, the surprising thing wasn't its faded paint, rusty trim, and worn interior - it's that the car's condition likely bolstered its selling price.