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Tax-return car deals

Automakers are offering cut-rate financing, cash back and lease deals just as our income-tax-refund checks are coming in the mail. These timely tax-return car deals are paired with the necessity for automakers to make room on dealer lots for all-new models. (See the Cadillac CTS deals.) Here, we break down some of the incentives being offered this month.

Car Design China Award winner benefits from Umeå placement

One of this year's Car Design China Award winners won the prize of a visit to Sweden's Umeå Institute of Design to mix with and work alongside other young aspiring designers and learn new skills using some of the latest technology available. Tsinghua University's Yulian Wu, who won the award for Best Luxury Concept along with partner Liu Kefeng at this year's awards, was welcomed to the school when he arrived on 25 September with the traditional welcome party for all new students. Umeå's program director for Transportation Design Demian Horst's first impression of Wu was a positive one.

The no-show cars: a reader rant on mad concepts

Instigated by Harley Earl at General Motors in the late 30s with the quaintly named Buick Y-Job, show cars, or concept cars, were presented to an excited public eager for new things. As the world recovered from a depression and then a war, these vehicles pointed to a better future that many people believed in, including the people who produced them. And, although many of the concept cars of the 50s, with their Jetsons plexiglass roofs and notional nuclear powered engines seem ludicrous now, in their time they weren’t that cynical.