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One Lap of the Web: Mini challenges Porsche; kit cars; and brand loyalty

We spend a lot of time on the Internet -- pretty much whenever we're not driving, writing about or working on cars. Since there's more out there than we'd ever be able to cover, here's our daily digest of car stuff on the Web you may not otherwise have heard about. Mini wished the Porsche 911 a happy 50th anniversary.

2013 Mercedes E63 AMG & E63 AMG S Facelift arrives

Ahead of a debut at the 2013 Detroit Auto Show, Mercedes has revealed the new E63 AMG saloon and Estate and the E63 AMG S. Just as we saw the other day, the 2013 E63 AMG – both saloon and estate – get a bold new treatment, particularly at the front, to differentiate further the AMG from the more prosaic E Class models. The more butch front end gets the new single headlight treatment of the regular E Class, but there’s a central splitter and great big air ducts forming an AMG ‘A’ shape to improve air flow under the car.

Video: Chris Bangle delivers “Empowerment: Design without Designers” talk at Creative Mornings/London

Chris Bangle – the undisputed front man of car design – needs little introduction, so the prospect of the former BMW Design Director and now founder of Chris Bangle Associates giving a talk in our home town of London was too good to pass up. His presentation (which you can watch in full in the video to the left) touched on his time at BMW, but was more focused on the idea of empowering others to create: "design without you in the middle", as Bangle says. From the story of the co-creation of the staircase in his Italian studio to the idea of encouraging people to think about their culture when designing, his philosophies transcend disciplines.