Donaldson Muffler, 6.5" on 2040-parts.com

70-year-old Bugatti Type 64 chassis gets a body, the old-fashioned way

In a workshop north of Detroit, craftsmen have been at work for months pounding pieces of aluminum into panels. The panels will eventually cover a Bugatti chassis that has been bodyless for more than seven decades. Three Bugatti Type 64 Coupe chassis were built in 1939 by Jean Bugatti, and two of them got bodies before Bugatti was killed while testing the Le Mans-winning Type 57 C “Tank” in August 1939.

Join CDN live from the RCA on 24 June 2010

Car Design News will be reporting live – via Twitter – from the Vehicle Design MA Degree Show 2010 at the Royal College of Art (RCA) in London on the afternoon of Thursday, 24 June (after 13:00 GMT).  The CDN team will be attending the show and interviewing the RCA's student designers, researchers, tutors, alumni, automotive experts and other professionals in attendance from the design community. We'll be posting all our news, photos, video clips and interviews to CDN's Twitter site so CDN's audience can get a real insight into innovative, future transport solutions from some of the world's most talented vehicle design students. At 16:00 GMT, the day culminates with a CDN exclusive online opportunity to "remotely attend" this year's Pilkington Vehicle Design Awards direct from the RCA via webinar.

Jaguar Land Rover Special Operations division launches

Cars like the Jaguar F-Type Project 7 (pictured) will come from JLR’s Special Operations If the creation of the Jaguar Land Rover Special Operations division to create bespoke, heritage, ultra luxury and high performance Jaguar, Land Rover and Range Rover cars doesn’t shout how positive JLR are about the future, nothing will. Jaguar call it “meeting the increasing expectations of today’s most discerning and enthusiastic car customers“, but what they really mean is that JLR have now got so much back on their game with cars like the new Jaguar F-Type, new Range Rover and new Range Rover Sport that they now have buyers with deep enough pockets to pay for just about anything, so that’s what JLR are going to do with the Special Operations division; give them anything they want – at a price That will mean car like the Jaguar Project 7 F-Type we saw at Goodwood last year being possible, ultra-luxury versions of the Range Rover and even the creation of heritage cars like the new Lightweight E-Types could become a regular occurrence. With a team of engineers and and designers led by Paul Newsome, recently recruited from Williams Advance Engineering, the plan is to create halo vehicles for both the Jaguar and Land Rover brands, and a team of 150 at a new Technical Centre near Gaydon will have a customer commissioning suite for bespoke and premium personalisation.