CDR Insight Quarterly – Q1 2013

Car Design Research Insight Quarterly – Q1 2013 Independent consultancy, Car Design Research's 'Insight Quarterly' looks at the latest trends in the automotive design world and beyond, four times each year. Currently distributed to a handful of their design contacts in the industry, we'll be running these quarterlies to highlight the latest trends and insights from a firm who work regularly and closely with the design groups of many major OEMs. In this year's first Insight Quarterly, the team highlight the notion of 'designing for export'.

Honda readies its jet airplane -- for real this time

Honda would like to remind you that while journalists have spent the last few years fretting whether the Big H has "lost its way," the company has quietly launched, shelved, resurrected, and all but waited out its plan to dominate the business-jet skies, which we are to assume are less friendly than United's. The HA-420 HondaJet has been kicking around for more than 10 years now, but the very first production-ready plane just rolled off the assembly line in Greensboro, N.C., this week -- and, Honda promises, the $4.5 million business jet should be delivered in the second quarter of next year. Honda began taking orders for the jet in 2006, but the long recession squashed the market for private jets.

Ken Block and his Ford Fiesta slide into Forza Motorsport 3

Rally and gymkhana driver Ken Block is torturing tires with a Ford Fiesta these days. So our Microsoft friends at Turn 10 Studios, makers of Forza Motorsport 3, have their version of Block and his rally Fiesta sliding their way around some open space and through the warehouse available for viewing. So here you go.