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C'est si bon: Mullin Automotive Museum celebrates the best of the Art Deco era

The French supposedly have a word for everything, but we couldn't muster any in English let alone the remnants of high school language lab upon first entering the new Mullin Automotive Museum in Oxnard, Calif., just west of Los Angeles. All we could do was grin giddily at the sparkling array of Bugattis, Voisins, Delages, Delahayes and other unique examples of French automotive masterpieces from the 1920s and 1930s in an exhibition hall evocative of the salon that housed the 1936 Paris motor show and similar exposition halls of the Art Deco era. The collection is an immersion into the excitement and optimism of Art Deco design, especially in terms of automotive design.

Expert: Fisker Karma's engine packaging, not batteries, likely caused fire

A garage fire last week in suburban Houston has been linked to a Fisker Karma plug-in hybrid, but the company quickly noted that the battery remained intact and unplugged -- and did not appear to be the cause. But if not the battery, then what? More likely, poor packaging in the engine compartment and exhaust routing generated excess heat.

Watch the sad, final moments of a crusher-bound heap

Automotive wrecking yards are good places to reflect on the real-world values of heavily depreciated vehicles versus global current scrap-metal prices, and to see which cars have suddenly had the fix-it-versus-total-it line moved by insurance companies (the early-21st-century Subaru Legacy Outback, for example, appeared in large numbers in high-turnover wrecking yards just during the last year, as fairly minor collision damage on these cars is no longer worth fixing). You'll see the things that a car's last owner does in a desperate attempt to sell (or at least live with) an increasingly decrepit heap (as we learned in "Repo Man," you really will find a Little Tree in every car). During a recent trip to a San Jose, Calif., yard, I encountered this sad yet strangely compelling scene.