Traditional Singleton Implementation vs Static Object Singleton Implementation

[koki2011]

I have usually implemented Singletons as described in the Design Patterns book. Recently someone suggested another implementation of Singleton using creating a static instance of a class and returning that instead of using new and returning a pointer to the new singleton. I would like to get your input. Is there any advantages of using one or the other? Disadvantages? Disadvantages for the static singleton implementation?

Let me illustrate:

Traditional Singleton Implementation

Car* Car::getInstance()
{
   if(!InstanceFlag)
   {
      Instance = new Car();
	  InstanceFlag = true;
	  return Instance; 
   }		
   else
   {
	  return mp_Instance;
   }
}

Static Implementation

Car& Car::getInstance()
{
   static Car theCar;
   return theCar;
}

Advantages & Disadvantages? Any documents or articles I can refer to for the second implementation ? Thanks for your help!