The mysterious identity of the new owner of the world’s most expensive car took a suspicious twist last week when the Mullin Automotive Museum in Oxnard, California announced that it would temporarily exhibit the 1936 Bugatti Type 57SC Atlantic that was sold last May in a private transaction orchestrated by auction house Gooding & Company.

Supercar enthusiasts the world over were given cause to smile last week when Porsche A.G.’s supervisory board approved production development of the 918 Spyder, a mid/rear-engine concept car featuring hybrid technology that debuted at the Geneva Motor Show last March.

The Phoenix Art Museum and the Petersen Automotive Museum have just put the finishing touches on a new exhibit that will run at the Petersen’s Los Angeles facility through late January. Titled Automotivated: Streamlined Fashion and Automobiles, the collaborative exhibit attempts to demonstrate the similarity of design concepts that existed in the fashion and automotive realms of the early 20th century, with particular stress placed on the Art Deco and Streamlining movements of the 1930s.

We should have known that Molsheim’s finest and the R&D department of the VW Group would take some degree of umbrage to upstart performances by Koenigsegg and SSC. Their opportunity to right the ship finally arrived on Saturday July 3, when Bugatti test driver Pierre Henri Raphanel took the wheel of the latest Veyron upgrade, the Super Sport.

Because many visiting car collectors also attend Pebble Beach week with the intention of buying as much as exhibiting, a majority of the major auction houses have a multi-day sale scheduled. While Russo & Steele has cultivated a reputation for American muscle cars and street machines, and RM Auctions can claim the largest volume of worldwide operations, it is the relative upstart Gooding & Company that claims the title of host of the officially endorsed auction of the Pebble Beach Concours.

One hundred years ago last Thursday, a group of entrepreneurs and businessmen stripped away the faltering Italian assets of the French car company Darracq, and renamed their new concern Anonima Lombarda Fabbrica Automobili, or ALFA. One century, two world wars and many thousands of cars later, the fortunes of Alfa Romeo are now being celebrated worldwide, but nowhere as enthusiastically as in Milan, where the storied automaker was born.

Living up to its billing by top travel publisher Frommer’s as one of the “300 Unmissable Events & Festivals Around the World,” the annual Rodeo Drive Concours d’Elegance offered a wide range of beautiful and unusual automobiles during its well attended staging last Sunday. Held every Father’s Day on the famed Beverly Hills luxury shopping corridor, this year’s Concours on Rodeo was themed “A Different Road,” and as such, featured some unique one-offs and concept cars, in addition to more familiar corporate sponsors.

When Aston Martin announced a few years back that they were aiming to stretch their signature sports car design into a full blown four-door sedan, reactions ranged from intrigued curiosity to pure horror. Having not produced such a car since the singularly boxy and oft reviled Lagonda of the 80s, Aston hardly qualifies as an expert in luxury sedan production, but the possibility that the new car would turn the marque’s sleek and purposeful design language into a bloated train wreck was the real cause for concern.

The celebration of Jaguar’s 75th anniversary will gain momentum this weekend as the marque returns to competition in the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Competing in a class that includes an Aston Martin Vantage, a Spyker C8 Laviolette, and numerous Ferrari F430, Porsche 911 and BMW M3 entrants, the Jaguar XKR GT2 wearing #81 will need every bit of the 500+ horsepower developed by its supercharged 5.0 liter V-8 engine.