Continental Comments - Continental Owners Club - Issue No. 111- Winter 1972 on 2040-parts.com

SAIC's Mobiliant wins 2013 LA Design Challenge

SAIC has been revealed as the winner of this year's LA Design Challenge. The Chinese carmaker's entry, a single-seat urban public transit vehicle, was declared the victor after intense judging sessions took place throughout the LA auto show's second press day. The panel – which included Tom Matano, executive director, School of Industrial Design at San Francisco's Academy of Art University, and Stewart Reed, chair of Transportation Design at Pasadena's Art Center College of Design – combed through the entries, discussing their merits and how closely they fit the brief, before hearing the teams' presentations in the afternoon.

Opinion: Discovery Sport and the long-term ramifications of pandering to the crossover convergence

Having pored over the first pictures of the new Land Rover Discovery Sport and consumed the accompanying official literature, we’re left wondering why it shares so much of its design treatment with the Range Rover Evoque, while simultaneously removing the last vestiges of utility from the Discovery nameplate. From its virtually indistinguishable grille and lamp graphics, over its tapered roofline to its bespoilered tail, it’s hard to describe it as anything other than a derivative of the Evoque. The difference between a Discovery and a Range Rover it would seem, is a body coloured C-pillar.

Is the Jaguar XFR-S on the way?

Is the Jaguar XFR-S on the way (2012 XFR pictured) New reports suggest that the Jaguar XFR-S – a more powerful XFR with the output of the XKR-S – is close to production. Last summer we reported that a Jaguar XFR-S was being planned (actually, we also said a Jaguar XJR-S was in the planning too) in order to take the fight back to the Germans, with the latest iterations of the BMW M5 and Mercedes E63 AMG now offering more power than the XFR can muster. The idea of a more powerful XFR wasn’t just wild speculation (or an educated guess as to what Jaguar needed to do to keep in touch with German rivals) but was also based on Adrian Hallmark’s comments that it would be nice to take the power upgrades on the XKR-S and extend them to the XF.