Arias Pistons 12.5:1 Compression 82mm Bore Honda B-series on 2040-parts.com

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.

Honda Pilot concept (2007): first official pictures

By Ben Pulman First Official Pictures 19 December 2007 13:09 Honda will show a concept of the next-generation Pilot at the Detroit Motor Show in January 2008. Although the Americans call it ‘midsize’ the current car is hardly small: at 4775mm long it’s over 200mm longer than a BMW X3 so expect the new car to be as big as the X5. However, that means the concept can offer seating for eight.

MINI Traveller set to return

MINI Traveller set to return You’d forgotten about the MINI Traveller, hadn’t you? Or maybe, as we foolishly did, you assumed that as the Countryman and Traveller were the same thing MINI would leave the Traveller moniker in the history books. No chance.