This week, the Big Three auto makers will submit recovery plans to Congress that emphasize cost-cutting, downsizing and renewed emphasis on higher-mileage cars in a bid to win support for a federal bailout. That sounds all well and good, but not good enough in our minds...read more.

In addition, our blog pointed out:

“The car is being advertised as “original”. An original what…an original replica of a Mercedes? Also, the seller states in his description of the car, “This car can handle and stop on a dime due to the mark 9 chassis and over sized disc brakes jaguar uses. The car can go 0-60 in 6.8 sec, that’s flying for this car. The car is impeccable condition, it runs and sounds Good , but if you would like to put it on the street again, the brakes need to be bleed, and the gas tank will need to be drained, from sitting.” Could a proper test drive of the car been done for the seller to make such claims?

This car was sold to the present owner with 600 miles on the odometer and 2 inches of dust covering it from being stashed away for 27 years, but it’s being advertised as being in impeccable condition. “It’s still like the day it was built, this car can be serviced buy any jaguar mechanic. All the dents on the passenger side are still from were the truck hit the car in the movie.”

We are big fans of all the Indian Jones movies and hope that this car ends up in a museum for all to admire.”

For those of you interested in obtaining the Lost Ark auto, place your bid online at eBay Live Auctions on December 11, 2008, 11:00 PST. You might find the Profiles in History listing for this car more straight forward than the one in our prior report, and all the fluids in the car have been changed and the brakes have been bled. This fine piece of movie memorabilia from the Raiders of the Lost Ark is also being offered at a realistic price - the starting bid is $60,000.

Profiles in History will have about 500 very cool items in their Hollywood Memorabilia 33 auction, but we'll be keeping an eye on what Lot 366 sells for and maybe this time, the Indiana Jones Nazi Staff Car will find a permanent home in a museum or personal collection.

Photo courtesy of Profiles in History

We want to pardon a turkey too, and as your guides to classic cars, our direction could only be driven down one course – a classic car turkey.

The first problem was choosing which classic car turkey to pardon with so many produced over the years, the Ford Pinto, the AMC Pacer and the Yugo to name a few. But to make it onto our list to be pardoned, the candidate had to have some sort of redeeming qualities that would validate a reprieve. That made the pickings slim.

After much deliberation, the classic car turkey to receive a reprieve (drum roll please)… is the Edsel. Yes, the Edsel, a car synonymous with failure. But sometimes a monumental failure can be more instructive than success. Edsel was not only a big lesson to Ford, but to all car makers of that era as well as today. And that’s the reason why we, in the spirit of Thanksgiving, official pardon Edsel.

We’ve outlined some of many failures and lessoned learned in Edsel’s short production period in this week’s classic car history highlight, The Edsel – A Legacy of Failure.

Black Friday is the American discount shopping day that follows Thanksgiving, which is always on a Thursday. The word "black" in Black Friday refers to the term "in the black" meaning making a profit – although analyst predict that this year “black” may refer to “in a deep black hole” due to the lack of consumer spending.

While some people head out on Black Friday to just window shop, others insist they will not shop on Black Friday at all, citing overcrowded parking lots and wall-to-wall shoppers. For car enthusiasts, we have a few suggestions for those who want to avoid the crowds and get a great bargain.

We have been reporting through out the year that car auctioneers haven’t been affected by the global financial melt down as badly as new and used car dealers. In fact, they have seen top-of-the-line collector cars keep or increase their value, and mid-range drivers have had their 2005 over-inflated price corrected.

Now is a good time to buy a collector car! So forget those shopping malls after Thanksgiving and get out to a car auction near you. Here are three that we suggest:

The International Classic Auction is expecting over 90 cars at their 31st Annual Autorama Classic/Muscle Collector Car Auction Friday and Saturday, November 28 – 29 at the George R. Brown Center in Houston, Texas.

Kruse International will present the Daytona Beach Thanksgiving Classic Car Auction on Saturday November 29th at 10:00am at the Daytona Beach International Raceway. 250 street rods, muscle cars and cruising classics are expected to come up on the block.

Mecum High Performance Auctions will be at the Kemper Arena - American Royal Center, in Kansas City, Missouri, and they are expecting to have over 500 cars up for auction starting December 5th though the 7th.

Happy Shopping!

Okay, you come across this garage find after the owner has passed away, a 1963 Pontiac Le Mans Tempest. The car has no engine or transmission, several dents in the fenders and surface rust over 90% of the body. What do you do? Put it on eBay starting at $500 and hope for the best.

Then let’s say a few days into the auction you get offered $160,000 to take it off eBay, but you don’t. Do you start to regret your decision when in the last seven minutes before the listing ends the auction has only reached $95,000? Well maybe, until a bidding frenzy starts which brings the final price to $226,521.

That’s what happened to eBay seller 3dogsatlarge when he posted a 1963 Pontiac Le Mans Tempest in an obvious dilapidated state. What 3dogsatlarge didn’t know was that the bidders thought the car is one of only six 1963 Pontiac LeMans Tempest Super Duty coupes ever made and was the fastest drag car in 1963 before disappearing.

Color us confused, but even if the car does have this historic provenance, why on earth would anyone pay that kind of money for it - in that condition Take a look at this eBay listing and maybe you can see something we’re missing. 1963 LeMans Tempest sells for $226,521.

Debates over what to do with the ailing automotive industry in North America are going on everywhere – on TV, at work, and at social gatherings sometimes causing family feuds and frayed friendships. We have heard some of the brightest and best give their opinions on what would be the best medicine for Detroit’s pain and frankly we aren’t convinced anyone really knows what to do. Every case made for and against a government bailout or bankruptcy presents a compelling argument.

One thing everyone seems to agree on is that losing the American automotive manufacturers would be bad, real bad. Another notion that will get most folks to nod their head yes is that in difficult times like this, humor can be very effective to ease one's pain.

So we’ve put together a David Letterman style top ten list of “Why We Should Bail Out the Detroit Three – A Classic Car Perspective”

10) All American cars will become classics overnight.

9) Fuel consumption will continue to increase bringing windfall profits to oil companies.

8) European classic car owners won’t have the American cars to make fun of.

7) American classic car owners can’t rib the Brits about the extinct British car industry.

6) We need to keep the alternative to metric tools and fasteners alive.

5) The automotive repair industry would be decimated if the Big Three weren’t producing.

4) The Lemon Law, cubic inches or psi might become obsolete.

3) The lucrative occupation of stealing American automotive innovation will disappear.

2) The French would be the only surviving car maker from the allied nations.

And the number one reason to Save Detroit

1) Driving American would mean John Deere or Caterpillar.

Classic car aficionado Jay Leno spoke out last June in Portfolio.com about what he thinks would fix Detroit...read more.

The forecast for Arizona's Valley of the Sun is sunny and warm, but car enthusiasts know it’s going to get hot. There will be two events happening this weekend that will bring out some of the hottest cars around - the Ferrari Club of America Desert Region’s annual Concorso Arizona and the Good Guys 11th Southwest Nationals.

The annual Concorso Arizona event will take place at The Boulders Resort in Cave Creek, Arizona Saturday, November 15, 2008. This Italian Sports Car and Exotics show features Ferrari, Lamborghini, Pantera and other spectacular Italian cars which will be on display from 9:30am to 3:30pm. Many of these cars are from the greatest collections in the world and several have values hovering around or above $1,000,000. More information about Concorso Arizona can be found on their website.

The Good Guys 11th Southwest Nationals will be held on November 14th -16th at West World of Scottsdale. This event will feature close to three thousand 1972 and earlier rods, customs and classics cars including the Good Guys’ display of what they call the “Terrific 12” - the year's top award-winning cars. There will also be indoor and outdoor vendor exhibits, a swap meet and most everything else the hot rod lover could want. You can get all the details on the Good Guys’ website.

You can see all the pictures we take at both events on this website next week.

The London to Brighton Veteran Car Run is the longest running motor event in the world. It commemorates Britain’s Emancipation Run of November 14, 1896 which celebrated the passing into law of the Locomotives on the Highway Act that raised the speed limit for `light locomotives' from 4 mph to 14 mph, and abolished the requirement for these vehicles to be preceded by a man on foot.

The annual event began as it did back in 1896 in London’s Hyde Park on Sunday, November 2nd surprisingly with weather that was quite kind to the drivers of the mostly opened topped vehicles. The first cars started at 7:00am and drove down the A23 through Croydon and Redhill. Participants stopped for breakfast at Crawley before the climbs through Burgess Hill and Clayton Hill and then to the finish on Madeira Drive in Brighton.

This year’s event celebrated pre-1905 French manufacturers, and the first stage of the official launch of the 2008 London to Brighton Veteran Car Run took place at the Moulin Rouge in Paris in September. 270 French cars made the trip to London as well as a number of brightly dressed dancing girls from the Moulin Rouge to help give the day a French flavor.

Bonhams' biggest ever London to Brighton Auction on Friday, October 31st launched the Veteran Car Run's weekend by selling thirteen pre-1905 cars. One of those cars was a rare 1903 Malicet et Blin 8hp Four-Seater that had taken part in thirteen consecutive Runs between 1995 and 2007, and was offered with entry to this year's event. It sold on Friday for £84,000 ($140,000) and the new owner enjoyed a successful first outing on Sunday's longest running motoring event.

Photo - Getty Images of 1936 London to Brighton Veteran Car Run

RM Auctions, in association with Sotheby’s, sold a 1997 McLaren F1 for a record breaking $4,058,120 - more than double its estimate. The high bidder is taking home one of the world’s fastest road cars and McLaren’s former Park Lane showroom model, with less than 300 miles on the odometer - basically a brand new car!

There were several avenues RM Auctions took get excitement brewing over the cars coming up on the block for their London event. One was teaming up with Octane to present the auction catalog online. The other was posting video clips of some of their most exciting cars on YouTube. We watched the 1959 Ferrari 250 GT Tour de France Berlinetta more than once and I don’t think we were the only ones as the car sold for over $3.6 million.

Some of the other cars that we enjoyed looking at included the 1938 Bugatti Type 57C Atalante selling for $1,058,640, the 1950 Talbot-Lago Type 26 Grand Sport Coupe selling for $500,000, and the 1954 Lancia Aurelia B24 Spyder America selling just shy of $300,000.

Surprisingly, the RM catalog included entrants from the Andy Saunders Collection “Art Car” collection in the sale. These cars were interesting to look at, but we didn’t feel they conveyed the high quality standards RM is known for, and the hammer price they took in reflected that.

The biggest shocker of the day was when a 1955 Cadillac Series 62 Convertible State Limousine sold for less than $32,000. The car was estimated to sell for at least $140,000 because of its historical past. This Cadillac was first used on July 2nd, 1959 in Brussels, for the wedding of Prince Albert II and The Princess Paola. It was then used for various important functions, such as visits of other heads of state to Belgium such as Queen Elizabeth II and President Eisenhower. It was also used for the King’s wedding to Queen Fabiola in December of 1960 and has been kept in its original condition remaining as it was when it was used by the Belgian Royal family.

You can see all the sales results from RM Auction's Automobiles of London on their website.

Photo © RM Auctions

You’re probably thinking that taking a look at stainless steel cars would focus on the DeLorean - flux capacitor not included – made famous by the movie Back to the Future and the car maker’s unfortunate demise.

The first stainless steel car was actually produced from a collaboration between the Allegheny Ludlum Steel Division and Ford Motor Company in 1936. Allegheny Ludlum approached Ford with the idea to build them a car that would be used as a focal point for the steel company’s marketing campaign of the many uses of this miracle metal that resists corrosion.

Allegheny Ludlum was the first producer of stainless steel but not the inventor. In 1913, English metallurgist Harry Brearly, while working on a project to improve rifle barrels, accidentally discovered that adding chromium to low carbon steel gives it stain resistance. It retains a stainless characteristic because of the formation of an invisible and adherent chromium-rich oxide surface film. This oxide establishes on the surface and heals itself in the presence of oxygen. Modern stainless steel may also contain other elements, such as nickel, niobium, molybdenum, and titanium that enhances the corrosion resistance of stainless steel.

The Allegheny Ludlum website has a page dedicated to the history of their stainless steel cars and in it they write:

“Of the six stainless steel cars that rolled off the Ford assembly line in Detroit in 1936, four exist today as living proof of the durability of stainless steel. One is on display at the Heinz Regional History Center in Pittsburgh, PA. Each of the original six logged at least 200,000 miles in the hands of Allegheny Ludlum officials before "retiring" to private ownership in 1946. Thousands of additional miles have been logged on the odometers since, and the shiny bodies have outlasted most of their non-stainless steel parts.”

Unfortunately DeLorean, the first car maker to mass produce stainless steel cars, doesn’t have such a glorious story to tell. Accusations of fraud, mismanagement, political interference and even the involvement of the Irish Republican Army are part of the alleged history of John DeLorean's car company.

It didn't help that John DeLorean himself became the subject of an FBI sting operation related to drug trafficking. But the DeLorean Car Company’s biggest problem was that the operation costs well exceeded the profits, and in 1982 existing parts and cars were sold off at auction.

Interestingly, out of the 8600 DeLoreans produced, it is estimated that over 6400 still around today. So why aren’t more cars built with stainless steel?

Photo © Allegheny Ludlum