Garage Wall Decor Polaris Logo 3x5ft on 2040-parts.com

Vauxhall Astra tweaked & Astra GTC BiTurbo diesel

The Vauxhall Astra Hatch and Sports Tourer (Estate) have been given a bit of a facelift and the Astra GTC BiTurbo diesel has arrived. It’s probably a bit of a stretch to call what Vauxhall has done to the Astra Hatch and Astra Sport Tourer a facelift, but it’s enough of a tweak for those who’ve just bought a new Astra to be less than thrilled. The main changes to the hatch and estate are a new grill, new indicators and new fog lights; a minor rhinoplasty.

McLaren plan to make windscreen wipers obsolete

McLaren plan to make windscreen wipers obsolete Much of the ‘clunkiness’ in cars – stuff like wind-up windows and a cranking handle – have been made obsolete in cars as technology arrived to make things work better, but one thing that remains on modern cars from the dawn of the motoring age is the windscreen wiper. Invented by Mary Anderson in 1903 after she realised drivers of the first motor cars were having to lean out of the window in rainy conditions to see where they were going, it became a standard fitting on all cars within a few years. Windscreen wipers have certainly improved over the years as technology has developed, but they’re still basically a strip of rubber moving across the windscreen to clear rain.

Video: Jaguar's Wayne Burgess and his design credos

Jaguar production studio director Wayne Burgess discusses his design credos and offers advice to aspiring car designers in a video from our friends at Jalopnik. He describes his design process as "creating order from chaos", channeling a burst of eclectic ideas down into a simple, pure form. "Design is an iterative process where it's all about throwing it out there, getting a load pinned up to a board and then looking to see what is working best.