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Michelin Challenge Design 2007: The not so ugly truth about rising vehicle safety standards

Can cars be safe and beautiful at the same time? That may not have been the case a few decades ago when automakers were forced to hang those big, ugly so-called federal bumpers off the ends of their vehicles.  With vehicle safety standards on the rise around the globe are designers today feeling a little '70s deja vu when it comes to meeting the challenges of making cars safe as well as more fuel efficient? "(Back then) we said it was the end of automotive styling," says Patrick Le Quement, senior vice president for corporate design at Renault and one of the world's most influential automotive designers.

Chris Bangle's ‘Illustrate the Future’ competition winner announced

Renowned designer Chris Bangle announced the winner of the ‘Illustrate the Future' design competition as Luis Fernando Peña Delgado at the end of the Interior Motives China conference yesterday. 22-year-old Delgado, a student of design at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogota, Colombia, was chosen by the judges under the direction of Bangle on the basis that his entry best followed the criteria of closeness to the original text, the quality of the illustrations and the creative content. The global competition's brief asked for students from any design discipline to examine excerpts from the eBook "Peter Teuful, A Tale of car design in Three parts" – written by Bangle himself – and translate them into a series of images.

Acura promotes movie role with secret-agent kit

Rarely do the lengths to which a carmaker will go in promoting a product raise eyebrows here at AutoWeek, but it still happens from time to time. Case in point: Acura sent us a kit of secret-agent tests showcasing the role of its cars in the movie Thor. Touting the carmaker’s first stint in a major motion picture, the so-called Acura S.H.I.E.L.D.