If Ferraris are a dime-a-dozen to you, if you yawn at the sight of a new Lamborghini, if a Bugatti leaves you cold, and you wince at the words De Tomaso and Maserati, then we have a vehicle for you. 
Apparently, you are a person of elevated tastes (and elevated income). Apparently, even the finest things in life aren’t quite fine enough for your finely tuned lifestyle. So, Bunky, if this is you, just what car should you drive? Our suggestion: none other than a McLaren F1, a car that was built in a neat, tidy batch of 100 between 1993 and 1998, a car that had a suggested list price of $1 million, a car that, if you can find one and purchase it right now, might well cost you more used that it cost new. Read more . . .
How did a company founded to process a cork flooring substitute create not just one but two of the most 
amazing sports models the United States has ever seen? We can tell you this: it didn’t happen just overnight. The story, in fact, was some 70 years in the making.
Synthesized cork business a failure
It all started in the midst of World War I when several Japanese investors formed Toyo Cork Kogyo, which processed an alternative for cork that was harvested from Abemaki trees. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but when the war was over and Japanese could get real cork again, Toyo Cork Kogyo fell on hard times and the bank that had lent it capital reorganized it–something that would happen at least twice more in its checkered history. Read more . . .
During his early years in the English midlands, William Lyons gave little inclination that he would eventually attain legendary status for the creation of sports cars. 
The son of an Irish musician-turned-piano-repairman, Lyons was a motorcycle fanatic who was fond of racing his Harley-Davidson in local events during the gloomy years of the First World War. He wasn’t particularly enamored of working the piano shop, so his father helped him acquire an apprenticeship with Crossley Motors, a Manchester-based car builder. But at just 17, Lyons was not ready to settle into the drudgery of the machinists business. Read more . . .
Sometimes amazing achievements are only acknowledged by the warmth of their afterglow 
rather than the fire of their presence. So it was with the Ford Model T, a car that garnered legendary stature after its passing but during its lifespan got no respect.
To be fair, that disrespect grew as the car aged from its launch in 1908 to the cessation of its production in 1927. But even when it made its debut, many assumed the Model T was folly, because they could not imagine there was money to be made by selling a car so cheap. Read more . . .
By an odd coincidence, both Henry Royce and Walter O. Bentley (see photo, middle) , two of Britain’s most vaunted automotive names, began 
their careers as railway apprentices. Many years later, in the 1920s, the two men competed for the title of best English car maker- Bentley with his hell-for-leather quasi-racing machines and Royce with his elegantly refined Rolls-Royce models. When the Depression strike and Bentley’s business collapsed, Royce was right there to pick up the pieces, acquiring the rights to the Bentley brand in a way that had to stick in W.O.’s craw, and the two names have been connected uncomfortably ever since. Read more . . .