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Meadow Brook concours crowns 1939 Delahaye and 1934 Packard best of show

Two long-gone luxury liners, a 1939 Delahaye and a 1934 Packard, won best-of-show honors Sunday at the 30th Meadow Brook Concours d'Elegance, standing out in a field of 250 pristine cars from bygone eras on a sun-drenched afternoon of nostalgia in suburban Detroit. The Delahaye 165 Cabriolet by Figoni & Falaschi won in the European category, while the Packard V-12 Sport Sedan by Dietrich, a ghost of Detroit's luxury car-making past, returned to grab top honors among the American products. The Delahaye, a drop-dead gorgeous maroon showpiece dripping in chrome and set off with yellow headlights, also won the People's Choice award.

CES: New cars and communists

The first day of the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show featured one new Ford, two new Kias and a plug for communism from the head of Mercedes-Benz. So, yeah, it was an eventful first day. After its new 2013 Fusion plug-in hybrid was named Car of the Show--following previous such distinctions for the Focus electric and the Taurus--Ford CEO Alan Mulally pulled the cover off the Fusion Energi plug-in hybrid in Las Vegas on Tuesday.

New Car Sales Accelerating Ahead

IT’S GOOD news in the new car market as the latest figures from industry body the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) reveal registrations already outstripping those of 2012 with one month of the year still to go. A total of 159,581 new cars were registered in November - a 7% rise on the figure for November 2012. Last month's figures took the year-so-far total to 2,111,819 - a 9.9% rise on the January-November 2012 total and already in excess of the year-end 2012 figure of 2.04 million.