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Ford Mondeo Vignale revealed – it’s back to the days of Ford Ghia

The Ford Mondeo Vignale (picture) has been revealed as Ford’s new range-topper Mainstream car makers have always tried to add some glitz and gloss to their models by tagging on a badge they thought made their cars more exclusive. Like Ford with endless ‘Ghia’ models sitting at the top of the Ford range after they bought Ghia of Turin in 1970. Ford continued to use the Ghia badge to mark out its best-equipped models until very recently (you could still buy a Fiesta Ghia as recently as 2008) but they finally dropped the badge and moved their top of the tree badge over to the ‘Titanium’ moniker.

Luigi Colani - Translating Nature

One of the most influential designers of the past half-century, Luigi Colani, is the subject of an exhibition at the Design Museum in London. With a career spanning almost six decades, Colani has applied his unique design style to produce cars, trucks, boats, aircraft, ceramics and consumer goods, as well as creating futuristic concepts for as-yet unrealized transport systems and architecture. There are Colani tea pots, mineral water bottles and sun glasses, but much of his work remains in the form of dream-like models or photographic montages.

Toyota teases new Corolla. Yay.

Remember when Toyotas used to be weird? Sure, they've been doing some marginal experimentation lately, bringing us one half of the Febreze twins and making the Lexus GS a legit good driver's car. But oh, when will they cast the mantle of staid sturdiness fully into the wind?