Here's a car that doesn't pop up for sale all that often: A 1960 Maserati Birdcage. This one here will be offered for sale at the upcoming RM Auction in Monaco, and it offers a look back at when sportscar racing really changed. A lot of people know about, or are fascinated with Maserati's Bridcage. Officially called the Maserati Tipo 61, it is more popularly called the Birdcage, due to its spaceframe chassis that seemed to be made up of thousands of pencil thin tubes. It was, in that, and a number of other respects, a fairly conservative and antiquated design. Built by Maserati as a privateer racecar, the Birdcage tipped the scales at just over 1300 pounds. Mounted up front was a 250 horsepower 2.9-liter

If you want to see that the Chinese market for cars is going to be a big player in years to come, look no further than this upcoming offering from BMW. In this instance, BMW is making a version of their bread and butter 5 Series sedan that has been stretched to better meet the needs of the Far East market. It seems that being chauffeured around is something that the Chinese are quite fond of. No, as a gearhead, I don't get the appeal either, but so be it. It's their market, if they want to have cars on offer that are chauffeur oriented, then who am I to disagree? BMW has created this long-wheelbase version of their 5 Series exclusively for that market.

Acura just rolled out the new 2011 Acura TSX Sport Wagon at this year's New York Auto Show. They are going to sell this ride in America, and I don't see anything wrong with that. What I do see as being a bump in the road is whether American's will buy it or not. One of the things that I like about cars and driving and people's attitude towards cars in Europe, is that they can do something like make a super-fast very elegant station wagons. Think of Audi's Avants and such like. Americans, on the other hand, don't like station wagons very much. They have a stigma over here. They are seen as being a rung below minivans, and minivans are a rung below SUVs,

How long, O Lord, how long? You're not going to see me pining away for a minivan, of any stripe or configuration, but I've never been one to doubt their efficacy. To me, minivans, although almost totally lacking in soul, panache and a few other things that are nice to have in a road vehicle, has great big helpings of practicality, room, practicality, versatility, practicality, and, of course, practicality. About the only thing that could make them even more practical is if they had efficient diesel engines in them. Well, they do, or at least Volkswagen's updated Touran with the Bluemotion mill in it does. On the downside, of course, is the sad fact that they won't be selling it over here in America. On the

BMW rolled out its Alpina B7 xDrive at this year's New York Auto Show. The car has been bouncing around on the nets for a while now, and although there's no getting around the fact that this is a huge car, there's also little way of ignoring that BMW and Alpina have overcome the enormousness of the car. The 2011 BMW Alpina B7 xDrive is motivated by a 4.4-liter twin-turbo V8. Yes, that is the same basic plant found in a surprisingly wide number of BMWs, but in the case of the Alpina B7 xDrive, the power output has been appreciably improved to 500 horsepower and 516 pound-feet of torque. That's an increase from the "normal" figures by 100 hp over stock in the pony department

Oh yeah, now we're talkin'! BRABUS (all caps) cranks out a bunch of, well, run of the mill German tuner efforts (if you can call Mercs that put out a ghazillion horsepower "run of the mill"). There's not anything wrong with that, but making a powerful car more powerful is kind of like catching fish in a barrel. Making an efficient car faster, now THAT strikes me as more interesting. And here we have BRABUS having a go at Mercedes BlueEFFICIENCY Models. Those would be the three-pointed star's latest, cleanest and most efficient engines. Sadly, this is not a tuning of the diesel BlueEFFICIENCY plants, and just as sadly it's "only" an ECU upgrade, but at least it's a start. BRABUS specifically had an ECU re-do of

Yeah, like you knew this wasn't going to happen ... or maybe not, Honda can be a very conservative company. Anyway, since Honda first introduced the CR-Z hybrid coupe, and threw around the notion that it's the spiritual and eco-conscious successor to the CR-X, one of the main complaints has been the CR-Z's lack of power. OK, that's a fair enough criticism. The CR-X was a wonderfully fun and tossable car. Light, handled good enough for a front driver, and it had enough power. The same cannot be said, it would seem, for the as announced CR-Z. The CR-Z puts out 122 horsepower and 128 pound-feet of torque from its 1.5-liter VTEC four-cylinder and Integrated Motor Assist Sporty, yes, but that doesn't make the CR-Z into

Fresh from its roll out at this year's New York Auto Show, here we have the 2011 Lincoln MKZ Hybrid. What's so special, you might ask? And yeah, I asked that too. If anything the most interesting thing about the MKZ Hybrid is that it's taking this long for FoMoCo to roll it out. Ford has been quite plain in its admissions that it plans to offer a full line of electrified vehicles in the United States. And as such, that will apply to corporate luxury brad siblings, Lincoln. For example we have the Escape and Mariner hybrid SUVs as well as the Fusion and Milan hybrid sedans from both Ford and Lincoln. Although there is no Lincoln counterpart, Ford also has new products such as

Ah Spring ... and a young man's thoughts turn to ... well, racing a lot of the time. And when it comes to springtime and racing, of the biggest is THE biggest: The Indianapolis 500. As per usual, who gets to provide the pace car is a big deal. And also as per usual, who gets to make streetable replicas of the pace car is also a topic for conversation. For the 2010 running of "The Greatest Spectacle in Motor Racing" (I think that's a trademark) it's Chevy's new, and very well loved Camaro that will be leading the 11 rows of three down to the yard of bricks come this Memorial Day. This is the fourth time a Camaro will lead the field. General motors

Audi describes the new livery for their uprated R15 TDI as "pleasure in efficiency". If all goes as planned, the Ingolstadt boys might as well describe it as 'the pleasure of kicking Peugeot's ass all over the French countryside.' Inside of the company, Audi refers to the new R15 TDI as the "R15 plus" to signify the car's upgraded mechanicals. How upgraded? Well, Audi is not saying (but they no doubt will if they win). The "R15 plus" is just the latest of Audi's diesel endurance prototype race cars. When they first rolled out the Audi R10 TDI at Le Mans, the racer was so forcefully quick, that competitors griped to the ACO to change the regulations so the gasoline and ethanol-fueled cars could keep