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

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.

Hennessey tunes the McLaren MP4-12C

Texas tuner Hennessey Performance will offer an upgrade package for the McLaren MP4-12C. The result is an 800-hp machine that looks even more sinister than the car it came from. The blood-red paint, carbon-fiber aero kit and blacked-out wheels in the rendering all say supercar to us.

Jaguar XJ 3.0 Litre Diesel Review & Road Test (2010)

We spend a week reviewing and road testing the new Jaguar XJ pagespeed.lazyLoadImages.overrideAttributeFunctions(); It’s 1968, and I’m knee-high to a grasshopper and still wearing shorts. The world is moving fast – the Vietnam War is raging; Enoch Powell delivers his ‘Rivers of Blood’ Speech; the last scheduled Steam Trains run; the Beatles release the White Album and Apollo 8 goes to the Dark Side of the Moon – and I’m standing with my dad staring at the new Jaguar XJ. And of all those world-significant events I think the only one I remember without the benefit of hindsight is the new Jaguar XJ.