2012 Lamborghini Gallardo Lp 570-4 Supertrofeo Stradale on 2040-cars

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2012 Pebble Beach Concept Car Lawn offers a tutorial in cars to come

The Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance is a showcase for some of the world's most exquisite vintage vehicles, but if newer metal is more your speed, the Concept Car Lawn is the place to be.
This year saw models from Bugatti, Lamborghini, Aston Martin, McLaren and Bentley as well as SRT, Hennessey, Infiniti and Lexus among others. The ultimate sampler platter of exotic and concept vehicles saw the Bugatti Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport Vitesse mingle with the Lamborghini Urus Concept and the mighty Hennessey Venom GT, though we found ourselves particularly smitten with the BMW Zagato Roadster and the Aston Martin Vanquish.
Not that we could go wrong anywhere we looked. The 2013 Bentley Continental GT Speed seemed perfectly content parked on the manicured putting green, as did the McLaren MP4-12C Spider. Get cozy with the full gallery below to see the smattering of metal on the lawn.

Blue Lamborghini Aventador flamb'ees eyeballs on New York City school run

Regardless of how unsure we are of the back story in this video, we don't doubt how cool it would be to get picked up from [insert place here] in a Lamborghini Aventador. In this case, the driver says he picks up his former neighbor's daughter from New York-area high school in an Aventador, and with most of us heading to the Big Apple tomorrow for the New York Auto Show, we're wondering if this guy might be available to shuttle us from the airport to the hotel. It never hurts to ask.
After picking her up, they then head for a quick tour of Times Square with a trio of GoPro cameras recording the whole thing... missing out on a great opportunity to catch about five minutes of Aventador exhaust note, the video, for some reason, pipes in some awful background music. What is entertaining are the reactions that people have to seeing the car - whether from kids or adults - as the car has a magnificently beautiful Azure Blue paint job.
Scroll down to watch the video, but beware, there is some foul language involved.

Why Italians are no longer buying supercars

Italy is the wound that continues to drain blood from the body financial of Italian supercar and sports car makers. The wound was opened by the country's various financial police who decided to get serious about superyacht-owning and supercar-driving tax cheats a few years ago, by noting their registrations and checking their incomes. When it was found that a rather high percentage of exotic toy owners had claimed a rather low annual income - certain business owners were found to be declaring less income than their employees - the owners began dumping their cars and prospective buyers declined to buy.
Car and Driver has a piece on how the initiative is hitting the home market the hardest. Lamborghini sold 1,302 cars worldwide in 2010, 1,602 cars in 2011 and 2,083 cars in 2012 - an excellent surge in just two years. In Italy, however, it's all about the ebb: in 2010, the year that Italian police began scouring harbors, Lamborghini sold 96 cars in Italy, the next year it sold 72, last year it sold just 60. The declines for Maserati and Ferrari are even more pronounced.
Head over to CD for the full story and the numbers. What might be most incredible isn't the cause and effect, but where the blame is being placed. A year ago the chairman of Italy's Federauto accused the government of "terrorizing potential clients," this year Luca di Montezemolo says what's happening has created "a hostile environment for ­luxury goods." Life at the top, it ain't easy.