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1954 Ferrari 375 MM Scaglietti Coupe named Best In Show at Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance

For the first time in the event's 64-year history, the prestigious Best In Show honor at the Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance has been awarded to a Ferrari. The 1954 375 MM Scaglietti Coupe seen here is owned by car collector Jon Shirley of Medina, WA, and as it turns out, has quite a rich history.
Nevermind the fact that it's currently one of five road-going 375 MMs - this example was ordered by film director Roberto Rossellini, and was actually born as a Pininfarina-bodied competition Spyder. Following an accident, the car's original body wasn't able to be saved, but the chassis was sent to Carrozzeria Scaglietti in Modena for replacement, and the finished product became the company's first passenger car design for Ferrari.
Following its tenure with Rossellini, the car was owned by Mario Savona of Palermo, and later Charles Robert of Paris. Years later, the car was restored by its current owner in 1995, after being found in an underground garage in a Paris suburb.

1967 Ferrari 275 GTB/4 is a love letter to Steve McQueen

There have been plenty of movie stars who've been into cars, but few genuine aficionados like Steve McQueen. The legendary King of Cool was known for driving his green Mustang and Porsche prototypes on the big screen, but in his private life, he loved his Ferrari.
There was, of course, his iconic 250 GT Lusso, but back in 1967, the actor and sometimes racer also bought a rare 275 NART Spyder. Sadly, that car was totaled a mere two days after he took possession, and there were no replacements available. So he bought this hardtop 275 GTB/4 instead.
Ferrari's Classiche department recently restored the car to pristine condition and RM Auctions sold it for over $10 million, but there's more to its story than its celebrity provenance and high hammer price. Listen to the guys who worked on it for McQueen tell the car's story in this latest video from the Aficionauto.

BMW, Ferrari, VW cars use tungsten mined by terrorists

Bloomberg Markets is reporting that BMW, Volkswagen and Ferrari have been using tungsten ore sourced from Columbia's FARC rebel terrorists. The extensive story focuses on Columbia's illegal mining trade and calls into question the provenance of the rare ore that is used not only in crankshaft parts production, but is also found in the world's computing and telecommunications industry for use in screens.
The ore is mined by the FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, or Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia - People's Army), and exported to Pennsylvania, where it is refined. The refined ore is then sent over to Austria, where a company called Plansee turns it into a finished product. Now, it's important to note that we aren't talking about the world's supply of tungsten here. In 2012, Plansee's American refinery purchased 93.2 metric tons of tungsten, valued at $1.8 million. That's peanuts, with the entire Colombian tungsten mining industry producing just one percent of the world's supplies.
That doesn't make indirectly supporting FARC any more acceptable, though. BMW, VW and Ferrari are all committed to not accepting mineral supplies from the Democratic Republic of Congo, which is also in the grips of a guerrilla insurrection funded, in part, by illegal mining. The same commitment would figure to extend to Colombian mining, but as BMW points out, it's difficult for a multi-national manufacturer to know where every item in its supply chain comes from. A company spokesperson says as much, telling Bloomberg, "These few grams out of the billions of tons of raw materials passing through the BMW supply chain are of no practical relevance."