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Chris Bangle's ‘Illustrate the Future’ competition winner announced

Renowned designer Chris Bangle announced the winner of the ‘Illustrate the Future' design competition as Luis Fernando Peña Delgado at the end of the Interior Motives China conference yesterday. 22-year-old Delgado, a student of design at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogota, Colombia, was chosen by the judges under the direction of Bangle on the basis that his entry best followed the criteria of closeness to the original text, the quality of the illustrations and the creative content. The global competition's brief asked for students from any design discipline to examine excerpts from the eBook "Peter Teuful, A Tale of car design in Three parts" – written by Bangle himself – and translate them into a series of images.

Lotus's glimmer of hope: Proton stands by Hethel

After another painful year of sales for Lotus in the UK – down 58% on 2011 - Norfolk's beleagured sports car brand has kicked off the New Year with the grand unveiling of its new flagship Malaysian showroom, and the thumbs-up from senior Proton company suits that Lotus isn't on its last legs. The announcement comes in the same week Lotus’s sales figures were released for 2012. Showing a substantial 58% decrease in sales and selling just 137 vehicles, Lotus Cars was the worst performer in the UK with a woeful 0.01% share of the market.  Are Lotus's Malaysian owners sticking by the company?

New finance deals for Mercedes

MERCEDES has introduced new finance offers on parts of the A-Class, C-Class and E-Class ranges. The A-Class benefits from three years’ free servicing, as well as low interest PCP finance packages at a rate of 5.5%. The deal means that an A180 SE is available for £249 per month over three years with a deposit of £2,743.