Welcome to Must Read, where we single out the best stories from around the automotive universe and beyond. Today we've got reports from Scientific American, Green Car Reports, The New York Times, and Hemmings.

After an amazing career in motorsports behind the wheel of some of the greatest machines to ever hit the track, we imagine hooning the 1985 Toyota Supra in the middle of New York City on a Toyota commercial shoot would seem like just another day at the office for Dan Gurney.

You'd think that the tradition of spraying a bottle of champagne from the winner's podium after a race was as old as sports itself. It's not. It didn't start until 1967 when Dan Gurney did it for the first time after winning the 24 Hours of Le Mans. This was the bottle he used.

The Birdcage was a wonder, and the epitome of pre-monocoque race car design, a gossamer web of 200 pencil-thin chro-moly steel tubes welded fillet brazed into a delicate space frame which weighed all of 90 pounds.

Photographer Brad Fox captured the business end of a 5.0-liter Chevy V8 mounted in what looks like one of Dan Gurney's Eagle F5000 cars. The 1600-px version is here and the giganto-desktop version is on our Facebook page.

Apart from inventing an aerodynamic device and becoming the last man to win a Grand Prix in a car of his own design, what has Dan Gurney ever done for Formula One? Why, he introduced the full-face helmet in 1968.

Do you know car people? Are you a car person? There is a world of awesome holiday gift opportunities out there beyond Porsche watches and Nascar cufflinks. Here's our selection of the weird and wonderful.

The problem with toy cars is that you can never find the Mercury you're looking for. As a former Cyclone owner, I'd long ago given up on finding a good office-cluttering Cyclone tchotchke, but check out what I just got!

With the wacky 2009 championship down to its antepenultimate race at Suzuka Circuit, Jenson Button’s eroding cushion of points was looking increasingly fragile. Rubens Barrichello and Sebastian Vettel smelled blood. Spoilers, shmoilers!

Muscle cars have come a long way since the 60s. The 8:19 lap by the Camaro SS would have been competitive in the 1967 German Grand Prix: the model year of the first Camaro.