Hard to say what was cooler Saturday at the Still Saving Lives Car Show - a vintage ‘55 Chevy LAPD cruiser, a $1 million Ferrari Enzo or 100 other cherry sleds.

And it was hard to determine which bozo traffic behavior visitors deemed most unsafe.

“For me, it’s cell phones, (or) people shaving and putting on makeup,” said Los Angeles motor Officer Terry Turner of Valley Traffic Division. “With cell phones, drivers are not paying attention.”

The fifth annual show, presented by the Los Angeles Police Department and the Valley Traffic Advisory Council, drew more than 115 thumbs-up autos at Hansen Dam.

With its cars, live music, food booths and parachute car safety demonstrations, the Valley Traffic Advisory Council hoped to raise $20,000 for safety education.

And safety-conscious police and firefighters hoped to divulge the whys and wherefores of motoring safely.

“Seat belts and speeding - that’s No. 1,” said Los Angeles motor Officer Steve Carbajal. “Cars are now so fast and quiet, people feel comfortable exceeding the speed limit.”

For Los Angeles firefighter Greg Hoon, it’s drivers who fail to pull over to the curb during the approach of a screaming fire engine.

For at least one city Public Works street inspector, it is the condition of the roads themselves.

“Our city really needs to do a better job of maintaining all these potholes,” said Stuart Horwitz, an investigator with

Street Services. “And the freeways, too.”There’s a big chunk of concrete missing on the 405 near Burbank Boulevard that they haven’t fixed - it’s been four weeks.”

Whether it was getting cut off in traffic, seeing little use of left-turn signals, or encountering parents who let their kids play in the streets, people were peeved.

But when it came to some of the hottest iron in Los Angeles, they were all smiles.

“It’s the sweetest thing here,” said Horwitz, 61, of his immaculate ‘55 Bel Air LAPD cruiser with “PUL OVRR” plates, which he spent 1,500 hours restoring with his son, Dan. “This thing cranks, let me tell you.”

Then there was the blue-and-white ‘61 Chevy Impala with the faux knockoff hubs and air suspension that Efron Banuelos bought when he was 15.

“Every red light, you get pulled over, `Nice car, howdy doody,”‘ said Banuelos, 34, of San Fernando. “Makes you go home with a smile.”

Or the plastic red wagon towed by Rick Gerrity with his twin grandsons, Ethan and Rollin Gibson, bracing for speed.

“Give them the trophy,” joked Gerrity, 73, of Burbank. “It’s a ‘39 Ford convertible with a full race-car engine.”

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Hyundai-Kia Automotive Group, the nation’s biggest automaker, introduced two Chinese local editions of its latest models at the 2008 Beijing International Automotive Exhibition, Sunday, in a move to tap into the market with the most potential. Hyundai Motor launched its luxury sedan, Genesis, on the kick-off day of the motor show at the China International Exhibition Center. It will be launched in China as the “Rohens.” “All (of Hyundai Motors’ philosophy) is integrated into the Rohens. I am sure this vehicle will become a representative sedan in the Chinese market,” Eom Gwang-heum, managing director of Hyundai Motor, said. Hyundai launched the sedan earlier this year in a move toward the high-end market segment to take on leading marquees like BMW and Lexus. A total of 16 Hyundai vehicles will be on display at the Beijing motor show, including Rohens, as well as a concept coupe model of Genesis and Yuedong, a local model of the maker’s steady seller compact car Avante. The motor company’s other division, Kia Motor, also presented its large-scale SUV Mojave, renamed “Barui” locally, at the show. Kia is expecting the launch of Barui, which means “the best sharpness” in Chinese, to facilitate the company’s sales there in its trademark SUV lineup, including Sorrento and Sportage. The flagship sports vehicle will be on sale in China from July. “Mojave (Barui) is our best-ever recreational vehicle model, full of style and high-end technology. We hope the model will attract lots of Chinese drivers pursuing active and vigorous lifestyles,” Kia Motors said. At Beijing, Kia is presenting 13 vehicles, including KOUP, a coupe concept car that was first introduced at the New York Motor Show earlier this year. Hyundai-Kia is set to make the exhibition a stepping stone for the brand to be better recognized in China amid recent efforts for the market. Hyundai Motor started production at its second manufacturing plant in Beijing this month, doubling the company’s production capacity to 600,000. Kia is also putting more weight on China, and broke ground for a second plant in Jiangxu Province last year. It aims to sell 200,000 vehicles this year and 440,000 in 2010, when the new plant is completed. Hyundai, which advanced into China in 2002, five years later than Kia, has sold 958,000 cars so far. Sales of Kia vehicles are at about 470,000. The Chinese car market is expanding ferociously _ now second in sales and third in production. The automobile frenzy is being fueled by the country’s skyrocketing economic growth. The new middle class spawned a social tendency to stress consumption as well as quality of life. Vehicle sales in China are expected to exceed 6 million units this year and 10 million in 2013, with demand increasing as well for full-scale cars. Last year, the luxury sedan market grew to 200,000 units, up over 34 percent year-on-year, and 357,000 for SUVs, which soared nearly 50 percent. Almost 900 vehicles, including 55 concept cars, will be on show at the biennial automobile exhibition. The motor show, one of the three biggest Chinese automobile exhibitions, continues through Monday.

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Patrick Le Quément is a genius. While other automakers’ stylists are content to rehash cues and shapes dating back half a century, Renault’s design chief continues to brave new territory. His cars have arguably done more to define modern automotive design than anyone else’s (save, perhaps, Giorgetto Giugiaro), from the 1982 Ford Sierra (sold briefly in the U.S. as the Merkur XR4Ti and a prime motivator of modern aerodynamic sensibilities) to France’s ubiquitous first-generation Renault Twingo. Le Quément’s car’s aren’t always pretty in the traditional sense, but they are thoughtful, polarizing, and spectacular. And (with rare exceptions) they sell like crazy.

The Mégane Coupé Concept presages the successor to the current Mégane Coupé, a popular, Volkswagen Golf-sized two door hatchback. But the concept, with its lithe shape and slung-back seating for four, is much grander and vastly more dynamic (closer to the Geneva-unveiled VW Scirocco, in fact).

The Mégane Coupé Concept also brings to mind (in a good way) the Renault Avantime. I was fortunate enough to tour France in an Avantime, probably Le Quément’s most daring (and poorly received) production car. Mine was one of only 8,545 examples built between its debut in 2001 and its quiet demise in 2003. A minivan-like monobox grand-touring coupe, the Avantime was unorthodox, somewhat ungainly on tight rural roads, and expensive. But despite its icy reception (even in France, where nutty cars are the norm), the car’s eccentric style endures. Le Quément’s vision for the car continues to influence automotive designers in ways they don’t even realize. It is, in my estimation, a modern classic. And the Mégane Coupé Concept has the makings of one, too.

Continued after the break, with more photos courtesy of Renault.

The concept employs a 197-horsepower, 2.0-liter turbocharged gasoline engine, matched to a six-speed manual transmission and front-wheel drive. Performance is brisk (0-60 mph in a tick over seven seconds), and fuel consumption for a vehicle of this size is modest (about 36 mpg). It demonstrates quite well that eight-, ten-, and twelve-cylinder engines aren’t necessary equipment for a grand tourer.

Le Quément has always had a thing for unconventional doors (recall the marvelous and monolithic double-hinged portes on the Avantime), and the Mégane Concept’s may be the most unconventional yet. Deploying upward, gullwing-style, the glass section and the lower panel stack separately, hanging at roof level like the wings of a dragonfly. Notes the designer: “The spectacular, unprecedented door-opening kinematics add that little touch of magic which contributes to the dream factor associated with the automobile.”

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