One Lap of the Web: Remembering the dearly departed

Car news and videos from all corners of the Internet

Classic Car History
Jay Leno has a 1,000-hp, RWD Oldsmobile Toronado. This isn't it.

With news that Toyota is leaving the great state of California for the greater (by landmass, anyway; your own opinion may vary) state of Texas, it's worth reminding ourselves that Toyota in America started as one lonely building on 6000 Hollywood Blvd., having taken over a former Rambler dealership. (The site is still a successful Toyota dealership.) That first year of sales in 1958 saw 287 Toyopet Crowns and one Land Cruiser sold -- more as curiosities than as practical transportation, we'd wager.

-- At any rate, Toyota's move from California to Texas is moving from "one of the most eco-friendly states in the union," according to Ward's Auto, "to the U.S.’s equivalent of China."

-- Ten years ago today, the last Oldsmobile rolled off the line at Lansing Car Assembly. In 2014, the citizens of Lansing, Mich., fret that a new generation might not remember the brand at all -- a brand that was at one time America's oldest car company. More than rebadged A-bodies and Wind Tunnel Waldo, the Oldsmobile is ingrained in a part of Michigan that still enjoys plenty of GM business. Nevertheless, Oldsmobiles are disappearing from the roads -- which, in the case of the awesome Aurora, is a moment worthy of pathos.

-- If there's any consolation to take away from the news of a Ferrari F40 crashing into a red-light-running Dodge Dart in Toronto, it's that the F40 is such a sublime creation of Saint Enzo that any example that gets destroyed will almost certainly be rebuilt. Brutal, yes, but such is the life of a million-dollar supercar. This isn't the first time in recent memory an F40 has fallen, of course. In 2011, a mechanic in Houston stuffed an F40 into a fence.

-- The amazing part of this video is not the fact that an 1,800-hp, twin-turbocharged Lamborghini Gallardo exploded at 200 mph. It's the fact that the other 1,800-hp, twin-turbocharged Lamborghini Gallardo didn't.