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Aston Martin to shift Rapide production to U.K.

Aston Martin said it will transfer production of the Rapide sedan to the U.K. from Magna Steyr in Austria. Rapide production will move to the company's headquarters in Gaydon, central England, in the second half of 2012, the company said Tuesday.

GM unveils electric Cadillac Converj concept at the Detroit auto show

General Motors pulled perhaps a surprise at the Detroit Auto Show Sunday morning, unveiling an eye-catching two-door Cadillac concept powered by a "future evolution" of the Chevrolet Volt's electric powertrain. Called the Converj, the Cadillac will have a range of 40 miles on electricity, with a potential total range of 700 miles after a generator kicks in. GM says the powertrain, formerly known as E-Flex, is now called Voltec, and could be used in a variety of applications.

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.