2001 Bmw X5 E53 (00-03) Steering Column Adjuster Motor Telescoping 6903945 on 2040-parts.com

2011/2012 Kia Rio Revealed

2011 / 2012 Kia Rio With the inexorable move by Hyundai and Kia to higher quality, Euro-centric cars the Kia Rio is overdue to be Euro-fied. After all, it’s two years since the Hyundai Getz got brought in to the 21st century by morphing in to the i20. So after a tease for the new Kia Rio last month, the bland (albeit it cheap) Kia Rio makes way for the Kia version of the i20 – the 2012 Kia Rio – which will make its debut at the Geneva Motor Show in a couple of weeks, with the five door Kia going on sale in September and the three door on sale in early 2012.

Who's Where: Ken Ma resigns as Changan Design Vice President

Ken Ma has resigned as Vice President of Design for Chongqing Changan Automobile Co. after only a year. The former General Motors and SAIC designer's departure is a blow to the Chinese manufacturer's bid to design more distinctive cars to compete more effectively with foreign rivals in China and abroad.

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.