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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.

Toyota to recall 3.8 million autos as floor mats snag gas pedals

Toyota plans to recall as early as next week 3.8 million U.S. Toyota and Lexus models--its largest ever--to fix floor mats that may snag gas pedals and cause vehicles to accelerate at high speeds. In the meantime, U.S.

BMW-Mercedes alliance: the latest news

By Georg Kacher Motor Industry 06 October 2008 17:13 BMW and Mercedes are continuing to work on joint projects, CAR can reveal. The two premium brands reckon working together might just stave off the threat of the credit crunch, collapsing car sales in key markets and the uncertainty wobbling the very foundations of the motor industry. But the BMW-Merc collaboration is proving difficult, according to executives in Germany contacted by CAR.