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General Motors taps Europe design chief to run Cadillac, Buick

General Motors is bringing Opel's design chief to the United States to lead Cadillac and Buick styling and is moving the head of Buick and GMC styling to the top design post in Europe. The automaker is also shuffling duties for two other top design executives. The changes were announced Monday.

2014 BMW X3 Facelift and more efficient engines

The 2014 BMW X3 (pictured) gets a facelift and new engines The current version of the BMW X3 SUV has been with us for more than three years, so BMW are giving it a bit of a mid-cycle facelift and more frugal engines to keep the X3 on top of its – very successful – game. Engines on offer for the 2014 X3 include the 2.0 litre diesel in the sDrive18d which offers 148bhp and 56.8mpg and the 187bhp in the X3 xDrive20d which returns 52.3mpg, the xDrive30d – which gets the 3.0 litre diesel unit – with 254bhp and 47.9mpg and the X3 xDrive35 which has an impressive 309bhp but still manages official economy of 47.1mpg. When it comes to the cosmetic facelift bits, BMW hasn’t really pushed the boat out, but the new X3 does get a new headlight design which is sleeker, new front and rear bumpers and a new surround for the kidney grill, which all contrive to make the new X3 look even more like a baby X5.

Race2Recovery gets set for second Dakar Rally

Race2Recovery, a rally-raid team filled mostly with disabled veterans, is headed to its second Dakar Rally in two years. The team took its two Defender-based Wildcat rally trucks, one T4 competition truck, one T5 support truck and two Land Rover Discovery (LR4 in the U.S.) support vehicles to the Le Havre port in France for scrutineering. Then they joined 650 other competitors in loading the ships bound for South America.