Car Design News – GM Interactive Design Competition Winners Announced at NAIAS

Car Design News and General Motors today announced the eight winners of their interactive design competition in an awards ceremony on the Cadillac stand at the North American International Auto Show 2012 (NAIAS). Over 300 design students from across the USA and Canada entered the Car Design News-GM Interactive Design Competition, launched in Spring 2011. Entrants were challenged to design both an interior and an exterior design for one of GM's four brands – Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet and GMC – each of which set a unique brief.

Barclays bids bye-bye to 'Boris Bikes'

BARCLAYS is to end its sponsorship of the so-called Boris Bikes, introduced by London Mayor Boris Johnson to the capital in 2010. The bank's logo has adorned the blue cycles since their introduction three years ago.But Transport for London (TfL) will be forced to look for a new sponsor after Barclays announced plans to discontinue with the deal at the end of its contract in 2015. The bikes were launched amid much fanfare in August 2010, with nearly a million journeys made within the first 10 weeks of the scheme being rolled out.

Man-made Modern Luxury Materials in Cars

Luxury, within the context of a car interior, has been closely related to the use of wood and leather for over a century. These natural materials have a familiar organic, tactile quality that are intrinsically desirable attributes for most people and, in today's mass manufactured plastic world, they also assume a luxury or premium quality. Throughout the last century, metal, leather and wood have also been progressively supplanted by bakelite, vinyl and then polymer-based plastic materials in car interiors as well.