The Bentley Continental GT, the most radical design from the brand since its acquisition by the VW Group, was considered a landmark in reinventing the design language of a marque that had grown stale since the late 1940s.
Assembly plants produced the final vehicles to carry the Mercury nameplate, an unceremonious end for a marque that had been introduced in 1939 as an upscale companion for basic Fords — but more recently allowed to atrophy to little more than a selection of lightly modified Ford sedans and S.U.V.'s.
It is the connection to the heritage of famous marques that has spurred collector interest.
That has pushed the remaining Polmoses to try to create luxury brands or to remarket traditional Polish marques that have never been exported, much as the Scotch whiskey industry rescued itself in the 1980's with the mass commercialization of luxury single-malt whiskeys, said Izabella Gazda, export manager of Polmos Warsaw.
To get out of this spiral, the world's largest car company needs to look at the one marque in its portfolio that has strong direction, and follow its lead.
While these are beautiful, the DB9 has a heftier price tag, the 911 a less-forgiving ride, the Maserati still has to overcome a reputation for poor quality control that has plagued the marque for years, and the XKR only has a V-8.
The legendary Italian marque took over the Shell station at the Carmel Highlands General Store, a vintage location just south of Monterey that has been a north coast landmark for half a century.
It boasts a democratically elected government, a robust devotion to capitalism, and a cutting-edge, hi-tech export-led economy that has rendered "Made in Taiwan" a globally recognisable marque.
The book that has landed Mr Marques in so much trouble, Blood Diamonds: Corruption and Torture in Angola, alleges the army and private security companies have been involved in burying miners alive, executing them en masse, and forcing them to leap to their deaths from speeding vehicles.
Marque Lynche's death brought his name back into the headlines in a way that hadn't happened during his later showbiz career.
