Concept Car of the Week: Bertone BMW Pickster (1998)

The creation of new niche products is an ongoing process for car manufacturers and sometimes combining different segments into one can provide a popular solution. Nowadays, all these mongrels are usually categorised under the same label ‘Crossover', which doesn't mean much anymore a part perhaps for an artificial off-road appearance. But back in America's sixties, the combination of a pick-up's functionality with the style and driving performance of a sports car became so successful that it created a whole new segment.

Jaguar XJ 3.0 Litre Diesel Review & Road Test (2010)

We spend a week reviewing and road testing the new Jaguar XJ pagespeed.lazyLoadImages.overrideAttributeFunctions(); It’s 1968, and I’m knee-high to a grasshopper and still wearing shorts. The world is moving fast – the Vietnam War is raging; Enoch Powell delivers his ‘Rivers of Blood’ Speech; the last scheduled Steam Trains run; the Beatles release the White Album and Apollo 8 goes to the Dark Side of the Moon – and I’m standing with my dad staring at the new Jaguar XJ. And of all those world-significant events I think the only one I remember without the benefit of hindsight is the new Jaguar XJ.

A.B. Shuman: 1941-2013

Arnold Baer Shuman, better known as “A.B.,” the former Naval Aviator and hot-rodder who was generally considered to be the auto industry's best product public-relations man, died suddenly Friday at his home in Hillsdale, N.J. He was 72. The cause of death was not announced.