What do you buy for the car collector who has everything?

Apparently, an RUF CTR-3.

Ralph Lauren, the fashion mogul and vintage-car collector, recently took delivery of an RUF CTR-3, according to people familiar with the deal. Lauren was snapped by the car-parazzi taking it for a spin recently in the Hamptons.

A spokesman for Lauren declined comment.

For super-rich car collectors, the RUF is one of those cult brands with a storied past and a reputation for high performance. Germany-based RUF Automobile has modified Porsches for 50 years, pimping them out with a super-charged flat-six cylinder engine and bulking up the frames with its own wings, fenders and vents.

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Like Dustin Hoffman’s Rain Man, today’s GPS navigation systems are founts of detailed data that can sometimes be maddeningly challenging in the real world. Unlike that movie’s eponymous character, however, GPS navigation systems will soon get much smarter about applying their encyclopedic knowledge.

The problem is that while most of today’s navigation systems know where the roads are and what points of interest are nearby, they don’t know how to apply that information to the driver’s current situation, said Thilo Koslowski, automotive analyst for industry researcher Gartner, Inc. “The navigation systems are not intelligent enough today to make this information contextual. Ultimately navigation must become much more ‘situational aware.’ Today it is only ‘locational aware.’”

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It’s been 15 years, and I still won’t forgive the U.S. Postal Service for destroying my 50th anniversary issue of Road & Track magazine. That thick, limited-edition copy arrived torn, taped and battered with a little yellow note on the cover stamped “Damaged in handling in the Postal Service.”

If I had been dead, I might not have noticed.

But the Postal Service does like cars, and for that, I can at least give my mailman a nod. Starting Friday, the latest stamps from the series “America on the Move” feature five muscle cars from the late ’60s and early ’70s, each illustrated in rich color doing smoky burnouts.

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For those attending the North American International Auto Show in Detroit this month, Mercedes-Benz has rolled out an all-new version of its big E-Class line-up. But for reporters who came into the Motor City early for the show’s media preview, Mercedes offered a sneak peek at the new CLA model it will formally introduce later this year.

Sharing a similar silhouette with the current CLS coupe-like sedan, the CLA will be the smallest model the German maker has ever sold in the United States, representing a significant shift not only for Mercedes but for the rest of the luxury car market.

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Only two of 18 mid-size family cars earned “good” ratings in the new frontal crash test by the Insurance Institute of Highway Safety, and one of those will soon be leaving the market.

The 2013 Honda Accord and Suzuki Kizashi were the only mainstream mid-size sedans to earn good ratings, with the IIHS rating another 11 models as “acceptable.”

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The long-term issues for this are really troubling.  Without power in Manhattan since the storm Sandy hit, Doug Block is in denial about his car. The 2003 Pontiac Vibe is in a garage on East 20th Street – a good two blocks from the East River – and flooded, probably over the top of its hood. Block, 59, has not seen the car yet, does not really know what condition it is in, and he does not quite know what to do about it.

“My wife filed a claim with State Farm, and we’re waiting to hear back from them,” says Block via email. “We haven’t even been able to get in far enough to assess the damage. But we talked to others parked near where we are, and their cars were ruined, so we’re assuming the worst.”

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They got some of them right!

Carroll Shelby is worshiped for building the fastest Fords on the planet and admired for creating a handful of fascinating Mopar products, the greatest of which may well be a one-off Shelby-ized truck prototype known as the Street Fighter Rampage.

Collectors thought the car squirreled away in some designer’s garage, but the reality is it’s been in a California junkyard.

Even worse than seeing it baking out there in the California sun is knowing that it can’t even be sold whole, due to it not having any legal papers. Oh, it hurts.

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The rains came down and the floods came up – leaving local streets filled with vehicles stranded and soaking wet inside engine compartments and past floorboards.

A State Farm spokeswoman said the insurance company received enough auto claims Aug. 25-26, mostly from flood, to declare Virginia a catastrophe.

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Ford is recalling nearly 485,000 Escapes and Mavericks to fix sticking gas pedals that can cause crashes.

The worldwide recall affects the 2001 through 2004 model years that are powered by 3-liter V-6 engines with cruise control. It comes just over a week after U.S. safety regulators began investigating the Escape small SUV.

The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has received 68 complaints about the problem, including 13 crashes, nine injuries and one death. A teenage girl died in the January crash of an Escape in Arizona.

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