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[extract] It is hard to imagine the car you see here was actually a Mercedes Benz SLS AMG Roadster. This

The 2012 Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance recently concluded and like every year there were lots of bea-utiful vehicles that were on display, and here are some, that I liked for your viewing. Enjoy!

As part of the Great Singapore Sales (GSS) promotion, Orchard Central (OC) has come up with a theme called 'A Classic GSS affair'. According to the management of the shopping centre, OC enters a world of vintage charm with car boot sales with a vintage twist. Along with the theme, OC displayed two classic cars along the walkway of the shopping mall. These are the Porsche 912 Coupe and the Lancia Fulvia RS. As a car enthusiast, I was naturally more interested in these classics rather than what is on sale in OC. The Porsche 912 is a sports car that was manufactured by the German supercar maker between 1965 and 1969 as their entry-level model. The 912 is a nimble-handling compact performance four-seat vehicle, delivering 90bhp at 5800 rpm from a 2.0-litre flat-4 power plant. It is capable of returning a fuel economy of up to 7.8L/100km (or 12.8km/L). A variant of the 911, one of the most famous and successful sports cars of all time, the 912 initially outsold the 911, boosting the manufacturer's total production until success of the 911 was assured. Styling, performance, quality construction, reliability, and price made the 912 a very attractive buy to both new and old customers. Porsche produced nearly 30,000 912 coupe units and about 2500 912 Targa body style during its five year production run. The Porsche 912 has also proven successful as a race car. The Lancia Fulvia is an Italian car introduced at the Geneva Motor Show in 1963 and produced through 1976. Fulvias are notable for their role in automobile racing history, including winning the International Rally Championship in 1972. Road & Track called the Fulvis as a "a precision motorcar, an engineering tour de force" in a review of the car in 1967. What caught my attention is that the car was actually powered by a V4 engine when most engines of the bent configuration usually have 6 or 8 cylinders. The engine has a DOHC design with a one camshaft operating all intake valves and another operating all exhaust valves. The engine was initially offered with a 1091cc capacity and was enlarged to 1298cc later on. This raised the output from 71bhp to 87-92bhp. The car is often used for track days at Sepang and Pasir Gudang. If you are a fan of classic cars, do make your way down to OC before they are gone. Old school's cool !

Retro cars are pretty 'in' nowadays. The reinvention of the Mini Cooper and the Fiat 500 was super successful. The Volkswagen 'New' Beetle is also a hit with the ladies even though it is in need of a model change as it has been around for almost 7million years. Yes. 7 million years if you take into account how fast manufacturers make changes to models nowadays. There have been retro flops too. The Jaguar S-Type is one of them. Too retro for its own good I say and that is why its replacement, the Jaguar XF is a beautiful modern looking car. Anyway, one retromobile that has recently stopped its production is the Chryslet PT Cruiser. The PT Cruiser , of which 'PT' stands for Personal Transport, is a retro styled compact automobile that was first launched by Chrysler as a 4-door sedan/hatchback in late 1999. On the 9th of July 2010 Chrysler had rolled off the last PT Cruiser at its assembly line in Toluca, Mexico, after building a total of 1.3million PT Cruisers including 200,000 units outside of the United States (and in right hand drive too). One of the reasons given by Chrysler is that the PT Cruiser sales have shrunk from over 125,000 units to a figure slightly under 7,000 units for the first 6 months of this year. With Chrysler barely surviving the recent global credit crunch with the U.S Government's help and with the very recent takeover by Fiat, this now slow selling car was taken out of production without any official announcement and hoohah by Chrysler. The car isn't without its fans. 1.3million units produced means that there was a lot of people interested in the car. Many blame Chrysler for not taking this car seriously or putting more money into a proper redesign. The Detroit News had reported that