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Video: Jaguar's Julian Thomson on the importance of design values

Jaguar's Head of Advanced Design, Julian Thomson, appeared at this month's PSFK Conference in London giving a talk on design values. Thomson's talk, ‘Concepting Dreams, Making Reality Happen', dealt with questions of creating a design story as well as how Jaguar uses the value of its heritage while keeping things original and new. Thomson – the man behind the 2010 C-X75 and the recently revealed F-Type – said, "You can't get a good design story if you don't look at your heritage, where you came from, where your values came from." He went on to discuss the ‘sad years of Jaguar', from around 1968 to 2004 where Jaguar was too timid to develop and "essentially made the same-looking car." He put this down to a reluctance on Jaguar's part to move too far away from its successful models and, quite interestingly, because "not only did we start doing market research, we started asking Americans what they wanted." Watch the full video on the left.

It's a Corvettes summer at the Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion

You couldn't swing a camshaft without hitting a Corvette at the Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion. Chevy was celebrating, in no particular order: the 60th anniversary of its iconic sports car; the rolling unveiling of the new C7 Stingray; the first-ever public peek at the C7R race car; an almost-unprecedented gathering of great Corvette race cars from all eras; and a ginormous gathering of the Corvette faithful tearing around the track in all models of screaming, roaring American muscleVettes, few with silenced exhausts and many emblazoned with all or part of the American flag. Is this a great country or what?

Special editions join 2013 Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT8 lineup

The 2013 Jeep Grand Cherokee will arrive in dealerships this month with more new special editions and a price of $60,920 including $995 in destination and handling. That's just about the same as last year's price. Output from its 6.4-liter Hemi V8 stays the same at 470 hp and 465 lb-ft of torque.