Jaguar Polished Valve Cover (drivers Side) on 2040-parts.com

Mercedes AMG has best year ever

With car sales plummeting in 2008 (and likely to be worse in 2009) there aren’t many bright spots around. But performance saloons are certainly one of them. As we reported back in December, BMW’s M Division had a cracking year, with sales of nearly 27,000 for the year.

One Lap of the Web: Semi-truck drifting, quintessential British cars and Jay Leno's Garage

We spend a lot of time on the Internet -- pretty much whenever we're not driving, writing about or working on cars. Since there's more out there than we'd ever be able to cover, here's our daily digest of car stuff on the Web you may not otherwise have heard about. -- When you think of Gymkhana, you normally just think of Ken Block ripping up streets with a Ford Fiesta.

One Lap of the Web: a Brat, a Saab, and best classic cars for college

-- We have our own views regarding perfect cars for college freshmen, none of which are endorsed by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration or any insurance company (except perhaps Hagerty), but Petrolicious has come up with some proper choices as well. And they're actually quite reasonable. As students are getting back to their respective institutions of higher learning, check out Petrolicious' "Seven Vintage Cars for College Freshmen." -- A GAZ 13 Chaika for sale on eBay out of Moldova claims Soviet Union General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev provenance....