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Euro NCAP crash tests: hybrids score full marks

By Tim Swietochowski Motor Industry 26 August 2009 14:49 The Toyota Prius 3 and Honda Insight are among seven new cars to achieve five-star safety ratings in the latest Euro NCAP crash tests out today. Dr Michiel van Ratingen, Euro NCAP’s secretary general said: ‘The technology andknow-how is out there for car makers to deliver vehicles with better pedestrianprotection. Honda and Toyota are giving us a glimpse of the cars of the future thatconsider the natural and social environment in its entirety.’ A Toyota official said hybrids posed new problems for its engineers.

Design Services: Car Menu launched

Within almost every automotive design department throughout the world, their comes a time when a junior designer is dispatched to find a picture of some new model's tail lamp, the side view of a particular class leading competitor or examples of several new cars' colour and trim packages. Whilst looking at the competition is not necessarily a healthy way of finding ideas, it is often essential to demonstrate what is feasible, check in-house proposals are not too derivative, or show how advanced a design theme is relative to the same type of cars on the market. But even if the particular aspect of a car can be found, press packs and magazines typically show cars in the flattering light of an exotic location or being drifted around a corner on opposite lock; rarely are these images particularly useful.

Middlecott Sketchbattle Experiment crowns first Sketchmaster

College for Creative Studies (CCS) student Graham Wright has fought off competition from artists, illustrators, industrial, product and car designers to be declared the Sketchmaster of the Middlecott Sketchbattle Experiment 2014. Held at Detroit's Kunsthalle Museum of Contemporary Art, the contest – a self-styled fight club of design – carried the theme of lighting because of the museum's many neon and lighting installations. Before the event, design students from the area – mostly from the CCS and Lawrence Technological University (LTU) – were invited to submit early sketches before a shortlist was drawn up for the main event.