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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.

Porsche GT3 to launch at Geneva

The next in line for the mid-life facelift (Gen 2) of the Porsche 911 is the GT3, following on from last year’s revisions to the Carrera and Targa. The GT3 has had only minor modifications to its looks, instead the detail, as you would hope, has gone on under the skin. The engine has gone up in size from the old 3.6 litres to 3.8, yielding an increase in bhp – up to 435bhp.

Toyota GT86 TRD Griffon heading for Goodwood FoS

The Toyota GT86 TRD Griffon (pictured) will be at the Goodwood FoS We’ve had a road-going version of the Toyota GT86 fettled by TRD and now we’re getting a track-focused version too. Just like the Toyota GT86 TRD, the Griffon version gets a makeover from Toyota Racing Division, and just like the road-going version – which costs £31,495 – the Griffon track version has to make do with the same 197bhp flat four engine the stock road car gets. But the changes to the GT86 Griffon are more extreme than the road-going version, with a focus on shedding weight and sharpening responses.