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Earthquake auction Ferrari 599 XX Evo handed to Google’s Benjamin Sloss

The Ferrari 599 XX Evo auctioned by Ferrari to raise funds for the earthquake in the Emilia Romagna region has been handed to Benjamin Sloss of Google. Back in May, following the earthquake in the Emilia Romagna region of Italy, Ferrari ran an auction to raise funds to help victims of the earthquake’ Amongst the items put up for auction by Ferrari were an F60 nose-cone and an F2008 engine, but the star lot was a brand new Ferrari 599 XX Evo, Ferrari’s track-day only testbed for all things Maranello. The winner of the 599 XX Evo turns out to be a deep-pocketed Google VP – Benjamin Sloss – who forked out €1.4 million for his new plaything (which was almost a bargain price) and, as part of the auction offering, he was rewarded for his generosity with a presentation of his new Ferrari at last weekend’s Italian Grand Prix at Monza.

Land Rover backed Race2Recovery team finishes Dakar Rally

The Race2Recovery Rally team – a group of disabled servicemen backed by Land Rover – has become the first disabled team to finish the Dakar Rally. Land Rover may have backed the Race2Recovery team in the Dakar Rally, but the real triumph is that of the team’s members as they become the first disabled team to complete the gruelling rally. In the space of just eighteen months, the Race2Recovery team has gone from a handful of disabled servicemen to a fully fledged Dakar Rally Team with 28 people, four Wildcats and a bunch of support vehicles including a pile of Discoveries for transporting the support team and equipment.

Driven: Ford Mondeo wagon

But the design of this Mondeo is interesting because of this, not despite this. The core challenge for the Ford design team was how to balance delivering a distinctively engaging design with being acceptable to as much as possible of the broad target profile of potential buyer. This is perhaps the biggest unspoken challenge for today's vehicle designer.