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The Audi R8 is a sitting duck, and Doug DeMuro bags it without pausing as he trolls through suburban Atlanta in search of exotic cars, turning on and aiming his Canon point-and-shoot with one fluid motion and nonchalantly banging off a perfectly framed image through his open window.

Wandering the halls of the SAE 2009 World Congress, I came upon the Scuderi Group booth. I immediately stopped because I had lingered in their display back in 2007 to study their split-cycle engine concept. At that point, all the company had were the mathematical formulas on thermodynamics that seemed to prove the potential for their innovative combustion cycle. An animated video showed how the engine might work.

Doing something new often requires taking baby steps, and this axiom seems to ring true when it comes to the excruciatingly slow proliferation (or not) of electric vehicles in the U.S.

When a garage-find Bugatti Type 57S Atalante coupe sold at Bonham's Paris auction recently for $4.4 million, the surprising thing wasn't its faded paint, rusty trim, and worn interior - it's that the car's condition likely bolstered its selling price.

The stock market may have recovered from its March lows, bouncing back to its (still rather pathetic) start-of-the-year levels, but with no commensurate relief in the jobs market (as more companies -- even seemingly healthy ones -- join in the layoff spree), there has been no recovery in auto sales. April's annualized selling rate remained well under 10 million units, a far cry from the 14.4 million figure of a year ago.

It's not just the faltering U.S. carmakers and their various affiliates that need to seek partners nowadays. Even the reigning kings of German automotive arrogance, Mercedes-Benz and BMW, are finding it tough to go it alone.

What if a Hummer suddenly became one of the greenest cars on the planet? This could happen given the right scenario, and two companies are attempting to align stars and planets to make it happen.