Help with layer blending/HDR

[NightShadow]

Hiya people!

I took quite a few pics whilst on a road trip in September and regret not using the tripod to get several exposures in some cases. I wondered if anybody was able to help me with the following piccy:



(Click for bigger version)

As you can see the background looks OK but the car is a bit dark (on my monitor at least), is there anything that can be done or is it too underexposed to actually be helped?

I have the full size image (only shot in JPG though ) and an old version of photoshop elements to work with.

 

[NightShadow]

Looking at this I must have upped the cotrast on the original as the one I have off the memory card is lighter. Heres the result from Photomatrix:

http://www.ttop.nu/images/tmrx8.jpg

It's not bad but I think it could be better, I made a darker and lighter version in photoshop (not show how much I changed the exposure by for each) and then used Photomatrix to blend it and messed about with the sliders not really knowing entirely what I was doing. anybody care to give me some pointers?

 

[NightShadow]

Thanks for that Martin, looks good though not overly keen on duotoning. Have put dodge/burn to use on the original, never used them before! This is what I have come up with: