Basscat Boat License Plate 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.

One Lap of the Web: KERS, Klass and autonomous cars

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. -- KERS, the kinetic-energy-recovery system, was first seen in Formula One a few years back.

Hendrick pays $1 million for first 2014 Corvette Stingray convertible

The first 2014 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray convertible sold Friday for $1 million at the Barrett-Jackson auction in Palm Beach, Fla., to car dealer and NASCAR team owner Rick Hendrick. Hendrick now has a pair of the seventh-generation Corvette after purchasing the first coupe for $1.05 million in January. Proceeds from the sale will benefit the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute.