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Gary Cooper's 1935 Duesenberg SSJ fetches record price at Pebble Beach

The 1935 Duesenberg SSJ formerly owned by Gary Cooper sold for a jaw-dropping $22 million over the weekend at the Gooding & Co. Pebble Beach auction, setting a record for the most valuable pre-war car ever sold at auction. It also appears to have become the most expensive American collector car ever sold at auction, eclipsing the very first Shelby Cobra ever made, which sold for $13.75 million in 2016. The Duesenberg was also the lone American-made entrant in the list of top 10 sellers, which was crowded with the names Ferrari and Porsche. You have to go all the way down the list to No. 21 to find the next American car: a 1930 Packard 734 Speedster Phaeton, which sold for a mere $1.127 million. All told, Gooding & Co. said it realized more than $116.5 million in auction sales over the weekend, with a whopping 25 cars sold for north of $1 million, an 84 percent sales rate and an average transaction price of $947,174. Clearly this is how the other half 1 percent lives. Gooding & Co. said there were five world-record sales at the auction. Joining the Duesenberg were a 1955 Ferrari 500 Mondial Series II, which sold for $5.005 million; a 1958 Ferrari 250 GT Tour de France Berlinetta, $6.6 million; a 1967 Ferrari 330 GTC Speciale, $3.41 million; and a one-of-two 1966 Ferrari Dino Berlinetta GT, $3.08 million. Oh, and that 1969 Ford Bronco test vehicle we told you about? The one that was rebadged by Holman & Moody as a Bronco Hunter? It sold for $121,000, which was well below the expected range of $180,000 to $220,000. Perhaps it was the presence of all those gorgeous Porsche Spyders and Ferraris that meant collectors weren't interested in boxy, utilitarian off-roaders. View 24 Photos Gooding and Co. had expected the convertible Duesenberg coupe to go for more than $10 million. It was one of only two of its kind built by Duesenberg — the other having gone to Clark Gable — with a specially shortened, 125-inch wheelbase and a supercharged straight-eight with double overhead cams, able to produce around 400 horsepower and a top speed of 140 miles per hour. It features a lightweight open-roadster bobtail body produced by LaGrande out of Connersville, Ind. The car was also owned at one point by race driver Briggs Cunningham.

Automotive Grade Linux will be the backbone of your connected car

Creating a backend for a secure, reliable, and expandable infotainment system is costly and time consuming. The Linux Foundation, a non-profit organization, has set out to promote and advance the Linux operating system in commercial products. Automotive Grade Linux, or AGL, is a group within the Foundation that seeks to apply a Linux backend to a number of automotive applications in a variety of vehicles from various suppliers and manufacturers. AGL's goal is to create a common, unifying framework that allows developers and manufacturers to easily implement applications across platforms. Currently, the focus is on infotainment systems, but AGL has plans for instrument clusters, heads-up displays, and eventually active safety software. At CES, a display from Panasonic showed a completely digital and customizable dashboard that allows information and apps to be moved from the gauge cluster to the infotainment screen and back, all through the use of gesture and touch controls. Although the organization has been around for five years, it's really only been in the past three that the group has been working hand in hand with automakers and suppliers. The first two OEMs to participate, Toyota and Jaguar Land Rover, have since been joined by Mazda, Suzuki, Ford, and, as of this week, Daimler. The latter is important as until now most of AGL's partner's have been based in Japan or the US. Other partners include suppliers Denso, Renesas, Continental, Qualcomm, and Intel. AGL want's to supply roughly 80 percent of the backend, allowing partners to then finish and refine the Linux system for each individual application. Think of how the Android operating system is refined and customized for individual smartphones from Samsung, LG, and Motorola. While the final product looks different, developers can have an application that will work across all AGL systems. Because it is open source, anyone can use and develop for AGL. You can even go onto the group's website and download a copy right now. There is also a software development kit available that helps facilitate app creation on the platform. Vehicle development cycles take roughly five years, so there currently are no cars that run an AGL backbone available for consumers. AGL Executive Director Dan Cauchy says products should be hitting the market later this year, with even more coming in 2018. Right now, the industry is relatively fragmented when it comes to infotainment and related systems.

Trump did talk to Bill Ford, but the Kentucky plant was never moving to Mexico

President-elect Donald J. Trump has been butting heads with Ford for a while now. A lot of it seems to stem from misunderstanding or misrepresenting facts about how the automaker currently does business and its plans for the future. After a sit-down with executive chairman Bill Ford Jr., the misunderstandings continue, but Trump has apparently convinced the company to make some changes. During his campaign, Trump claimed that Ford was going to fire US workers and move manufacturing to Mexico. That wasn't the case – yes, Ford planned to transfer Focus and C-Max production from Wayne, Michigan, to Cuautitlan, Mexico, but no, that wouldn't mean anyone losing their job. The Wayne plant will continue to operate, and likely busier than before, as it will be the home of the new Bronco and Ranger. So Ford CEO Mark Fields responded with the facts, and then chairman Bill Ford Jr. sat down with Trump over the summer. Things apparently weren't resolved to Trump's satisfaction, so he and Bill Ford spoke on the phone yesterday as he claims in this tweet: This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. Let's pick that apart. First off, it's not a Lincoln plant, per se – the Louisville Assembly Plant currently builds the Ford Escape and Lincoln MKC, two small crossovers that share a platform. Ford was considering moving MKC production out of Kentucky to Mexico, but it would not have resulted in many lost jobs if any – the union had already agreed to moving the MKC in 2015 negotiations, and taking production of the slow-selling Lincoln out of the plant would open up capacity for more Fords. Be that as it may, Ford has decided not to move MKC production out of the plant, either for political reasons of placation or because it didn't make the greatest deal of business sense, maybe a combination of the two. That means Trump isn't really saving any American jobs in the short term. If anything, this move could keep Ford supply-constrained and result in reduced sales, which in turn brings the company less money and affects the bottom line and all employees. But that's speculation, so we won't tweet it. There is of course the possibility that Ford will be convinced, either by sheer will or by a more attractive trade situation, to invest in increased US production, which could bear fruit later on. We are told by Ford that the two men did in fact speak yesterday.