Mazda 6 Wide Body Engraved Chrome License Plate Frame -metal Made In Usa Genui on 2040-parts.com

News watch December 2012: today's auto industry news

Welcome to CAR Magazine's news aggregator as we round up the daily stories in the auto industry. Top tip: news summaries are added from the top hour-by-hour Monday 31 December 2012• Despite reports earlier this month that shareholders valued Mercedes-Benz at half that of its luxury rival BMW, Mercedes CEO Dieter Zetsche has remained bullish about his ambitious targets for the carmaker's growth. 'I am confident that we will be ahead of our rivals by 2020 at the latest,' he told German newspaper Boersen-Zeitung in an interview.

The Bentley Art Project

Designers at Bentley have collaborated to create one-off works of art to benefit the Christie, a specialist cancer center in Manchester, UK. The collection, which features a vast array of sculptures, paintings, digital art and photography created in many different media, will be auctioned off at an exclusive event at Bonhams in London on December 1. The unique pieces, created by created by Bentley's head of design, Dirk van Braeckel; head of interior design Robin Page; chief designer Raul Pires and 20 other designers, digital designers and clay modelers, draw on the skills and techniques utilized in their roles and their enthusiasm for art.

First Jaguar F-Type customer cars leave Jaguar’s Castle Bromwich

The first proper sports car from Jaguar since the E-Type ended production almost 40 years ago (and it could be argued the later V12 E-Types were more a GT than a proper sports car), the F-Type is a hook to hang Jaguar’s future intent on – and it seems to be making a pretty good fist of it. It may not be cheap (you’ll pay £80k for a V8 F-Type) and it may be heavier than its lightweight aluminium underpinnings promise, but it looks great, goes very well and seems to have proper Jaguar ‘Soul’. A winning combination.