Who's Where: Brett Patterson and Rohan Saparamadu join Geely’s Shanghai studio

Brett Patterson and Rohan Saparamadu have joined Geely as chief designers, based in Shanghai. They will both report to the company's design director Ken Ma. Patterson most recently worked as a contract designer at GM Europe's Design Center, Rüsslesheim, and has worked for GM for total of 14 years on a wide range of vehicle development programmes in Australia, Germany, Sweden and USA.

2013 Aston Martin DB9 – Virage Vanquished

Aston Martin has given the DB9 a makeover – a facelift and a bit more – for 2013 as the tweaked DB9 signals the end of the Virage. But all is not lost with the Virage, as the 2013 DB9 gets a Virage makeover – inside and out as well as more power from its V12 and the addition of Aston Martin’s adaptive damping. The 5.9 litre V12 engine under the new DB9′s bonnet now offers 510bhp and 442lb/ft of torque – more than the Virage managed to muster – and is much the same as the revised AM11 V12 we see in the new Vanquish but with a bit less power.

SMALL CARS DOMINATE USED CAR SALES

SMALL, FUEL-EFFICIENT cars continue to be the most appealing to used car buyers, research shows. The figures from Experian, the global information service, demonstrated that 285,962 used Ford Fiestas were sold last year making it Britain’s best selling used car in 2010. Even though overall sales for the Fiesta were lower than in 2009 there was more of a pronounced drop in sales of Vauxhall's Corsa, which came in second place to the Fiesta.