VW to announce Italdesign takeover on Tuesday

Volkswagen will announce Tuesday that it will take a 90 percent stake in Italdesign Giugiaro S.p.A, people familiar with the matter told Automotive News Europe. The Giugiaro family will retain 10 percent in the Italian design house that is famous for styling cars such as the first-generation VW Golf. VW plans to acquire control of Italdesign to help reach its goal of becoming the world's largest automaker by 2018 with sales of 10 million vehicles a year.

First Sight: Divine DS concept

To mark 100 days since the announcement that DS was to become a brand of its own, separate from Citroën, it has created the Divine DS concept – a self-styled manifesto for the new marque. We traveled to Citroën's DS' design center on the southern outskirts of Paris to be amongst the first to see this statement of intent and speak to the people behind its creation. "This concept car is the very essence of what DS is and what it will be," declares Yves Bonnefont, the CEO of the DS brand.

Concept Car of the Week: Ferrari Pinin (1980)

Over the years, Ferrari has slowly built a reputation for the fact that any car that wears the prancing horse badge on its bonnet ought to be a design masterpiece. Everyone has their own personal favorite: 250 GTO, 250 GT California Spider, 330 P4, Modulo, Daytona, you name it...  Yet few would remember – or even know about – the odd ones, the ugly Ferraris hidden away, rarely allowed to see the light of day; a few rare cars that got brushed under the carpet as quickly as they appeared include the 365 GTC/4, FZ93 Zagato, the 408 Integrale and the Pinin. Most of them are the work of independent studios, long-distanced from Enzo's (dis)approval.