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College Exhibition: RCA/GM - Fast Forward 2049

First year students at the Royal College of Art recently held an exhibition at the London Transport Museum commemorating the 40th anniversary of the school's vehicle design course. Sponsored by GM's Opel/Vauxhall division, 19 students responded to a brief that called for them to ‘Fast Forward into the Future'. Divided into three groups - Inside Out, Urban Flow and Automark - the students devised their own notions of vehicles for the year 2049, and in some cases entirely reinvented Opel brand values and aesthetics.

News watch September 2011: today's auto industry news

Come to CAR Magazine's news aggregator as we round up the daily stories in the auto industry. Top tip: news summaries are added from the top hour-by-hourFriday 30 September 2011• Toyota and Honda have both returned to full production after Easter's disastrous earthquake. September car sales will be released next week, and Bloomberg predicts a rise to 12.8 million seasonally adjusted annual rate (Bloomberg)• The US now predicts a slightly smaller 2011 full-year sales total.

Mazda hires VW alum Derek Jenkins to head U.S. design staff

Former Volkswagen designer Derek Jenkins has been hired to be the design chief for Mazda in America. Jenkins, 39, fills a position vacated last summer by Franz von Holzhausen, who left to take the top design post at electric-vehicle maker Tesla Motors. Jenkins had been chief of design for the Volkswagen Group in North America, which he joined in 2000.