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

Lotus Evora Facelift heading for Frankfurt

Lotus Evora Facelift expected at Frankfurt based on the Mansory Evora (above) It’s a ‘back to reality’ story from Lotus, for a change, with the news that, possibly, they are going to take a facelift Lotus Evora to the Frankfurt Motor Show. Of course, we’ve been here before. Earlier in the year we reported that Lotus were taking an Evora with a facelift off to Geneva, but that turned out to be a Mansory version of the Evora, seemingly with the blessing of Lotus as it appeared on their stand.

Jaguar Land Rover doubles its profits

Jaguar Land Rover has reported sales up by 29 per cent in the second quarter of their financial year and profits up by 100 per cent. It’s a rough car market out there – especially in Europe – but Jaguar Land Rover continues to grow its sales with revenues up by over 13 per cent, sales up by 29 per cent and pre-tax profit up by 100 per cent to £431 million. These are strong figures from JLR and reflect the strong sales of the Evoque around the globe (100,000 and counting) and remarkably strong sales for the old Range Rover, despite the 2013 Range Range Rover about to hit showrooms.

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.