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Mini Inspired By Goodwood (2011) first official pictures

It was only a matter of time before Mini and Rolls-Royce - the two most disparate points of the BMW group - joined forces on some special editions. And so it is that Mini will show the Mini Inspired By Goodwood at the 2011 Shanghai auto show. Just 1000 Minis Inspired By Goodwood will be built (in Oxford, not Goodwood), with worldwide sales starting in spring 2012.

Video: Jaguar's Julian Thomson on the importance of design values

Jaguar's Head of Advanced Design, Julian Thomson, appeared at this month's PSFK Conference in London giving a talk on design values. Thomson's talk, ‘Concepting Dreams, Making Reality Happen', dealt with questions of creating a design story as well as how Jaguar uses the value of its heritage while keeping things original and new. Thomson – the man behind the 2010 C-X75 and the recently revealed F-Type – said, "You can't get a good design story if you don't look at your heritage, where you came from, where your values came from." He went on to discuss the ‘sad years of Jaguar', from around 1968 to 2004 where Jaguar was too timid to develop and "essentially made the same-looking car." He put this down to a reluctance on Jaguar's part to move too far away from its successful models and, quite interestingly, because "not only did we start doing market research, we started asking Americans what they wanted." Watch the full video on the left.

Aston Martin Rapide S: The video

Ahead of the media launch of the Aston Martin Rapide S in Spain, Aston Martin has delivered a Rapide S video to pique interest. Now we have the arrival of the Aston Martin Rapide S as a replacement for the Rapide, which goes a similar route to the DB9 with a more a aggressive attitude and more power. Aston Martin revealed the Rapide S in January in an effort to inject some oomph in to Rapide sales – as a replacement for the Rapide and not as an ‘S’ model to sit above it – bestowing it with 550bhp instead of the Rapide’s 470bhp, chucking in a new grill and boot spoiler and a set of the Gen 4 tweaks like adaptive dampers.